


brave soldier girl, comes marching home

by toastweasel



Series: Harmony [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Violence, Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, Flashbacks, HEAVY content warnings all over this sucker for, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovering Alcoholic, Slow Burn, Substance Abuse, adding some cws for:, and just....., but nothing more graphic than what is in the show, i am so sorry it is going to take FOREVER to get to the kyalin but its there. i promise. I PROMISE, like....the slowest of slow burns I'm so sorry but Lin has to Deal With Her Shit, there WILL be a happy ending eventually so please hang in there. i wouldn't do Lin dirty like that, unapologetically bisexual Lin Beifong
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 04:08:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 81,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26346880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toastweasel/pseuds/toastweasel
Summary: [CW: Alcoholism, Alcohol Abuse/Substance Abuse, PTSD and its affects]Lin Beifong has been sober for eighteen years, a hundred and five days, and twenty-three hours when the Equalists force her to kneel in the cold, rainy plaza of Air Temple Island and Amon takes her bending away.Eighteen and a half years of work, hours of meetings and withdrawals and makeshift sobriety chips lined up along her backsplash, gifted to her quietly by the world’s otherwise most exuberant man…all gone in an instant.Just like her bending.
Relationships: Lin Beifong & Bumi II, Lin Beifong & Kya II, Lin Beifong & Mako, Lin Beifong & Saikhan, Lin Beifong & Tenzin, Lin Beifong/Kya II, also Linzin but in the past and not the focus
Series: Harmony [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930441
Comments: 523
Kudos: 547





	1. Game 1: White Dragon

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be different from my usual fluff. I love me some angst, and Lin Beifong is a magnet for it. I've noticed...similarities, to say the least, in Lin and my alcoholic grandfathers, along with my own experiences with PTSD. A lot of first responders have a lot of trauma they deal with via substance abuse, and I thought I'd explore this with Lin here. 
> 
> This fic will deal HEAVILY in alcoholism, Alcohol Abuse/Substance Abuse, PTSD, and the effects of these. If this sounds like something that could trigger you, please either proceed with caution or skip this fic altogether.
> 
> If it sounds like something you're interested in, please continue. I have no idea how long this fanfic going to be--I'm just along for the ride as long as my Lin muse wants to tell it.
> 
> Thanks to Linguini for beta reading.

Lin Beifong has been sober for eighteen years, a hundred and five days, and twenty-three hours when the Equalists force her to kneel in the cold, rainy plaza of Air Temple Island and Amon takes her bending away.

She can feel the loss of her bending as aching as the loss of the bottle, but this one is worse because it’s permanent. She could, theoretically, buy a bottle of booze and smash her sobriety streak at any time, but she doesn’t. She worked too hard for it, and Aang—the living embodiment of whom is now in her city with a cheeky smile, radiant eyes, and biceps bigger than even Lin’s—would be disappointed if she did.

She and Aang had prepared for her to go sober, and he had helped her through it, but nothing prepares her for the way her bending is taken from her. She thought it would be painful, which would at least give her something to focus on, but it’s not. It’s over in an instant: one minute, she’s a master earthbender, the metalbending eldest daughter of Chief Beifong, the woman who single-handedly redesigned the metalbending apparatus to be faster, safer, and cleaner and rooted out corruption in the Republic City Police Department—

And then, a second later, she’s…not.

The metal suit she’s worn for what feels like her entire life is quiet. The earth no longer sings.

And the worst part is there’s no immediate catalyst, it seems. Just the press of a monster’s thumb of her forehead, the lightest of pressure, a moment of adrenaline, and her entire world is gone.

Amon deposits her mostly-unconscious body before the Police Station like the world’s worst trophy kill. She stinks of ozone and metal shavings, of blood and sweat. She’s carried into the break room, laid on a cot, and someone calls for a medic.

She can hear the metallic clink of boots around her, but can no longer feel their vibrations. She tries, to reach for the metal in her surroundings, in her armor, in the cables on her back, but feels nothing.

She starts to shake, violently, as her former officers bend off her armor to check for injuries. It’s tossed into a crumpled heap in the corner and they pull the metal guards off her legs, leaving her in nothing but her pants and undershirt.

She feels exposed, like a turtle without its shell.

She wants to vomit, but manages to keep the bile down.

“Lin,” she hears softly, and she opens her eyes briefly to see Assistant Chief—no, _Chief_ Saikhan kneeling next to her. “What happened? Amon is saying—”

He glances over her body, obviously not wanting to believe.

She closes her eyes and feels her bottom lip and chin quiver unexpectedly. She nods, once, and Saikhan inhales sharply. There’s his hand, big and warm on her bare shoulder, and she can feel he’s shaking, too.

“We’ll get the bastard,” he tells her, his voice breaking.

She nods again and turns her head away, not trusting herself to speak.

A healer comes, but naturally he can only heal her superficial wounds. The waterbender isn’t nearly as good as Katara, or Kya, and Lin doesn’t know why he bothers. Everyone knows by now there’s no way to restore someone’s bending once it’s gone.

She is no longer an earthbender.

The station bustles around her, people streaming in and out, as if oblivious to the fact her entire world has twisted itself on its axis and shattered into a million pieces at her feet. The healer helps her sit up and wraps her in a blanket, but she barely feels it. She hears the man speaking to Saikhan, telling him to get food and water in her as soon as humanly possible.

Saikhan is busy though, and he’s receiving reports about the movements, and the fact someone saw Equalists loading a group of people that looked suspiciously like Tenzin and his family into a fan.

Her heart sinks, and suddenly Lin can’t hold back anymore.

She grabs a nearby trash can and dry heaves into it, hacking wrenching heaves that shake her entire body and make everyone in the room stop and look at her, then look away in sympathy.

Nothing comes up. She hasn’t eaten in hours, not since before she went to Air Temple Island and certainly not after Amon captures her. It’s the only thing that keeps the trash can clean, and she’s not sure she’s grateful for it.

One of the younger officers, a Sergeant she knows only by his face, scuttles up to her as the fit passes. “Can—Can I get you something, Chief?”

“Yeah,” she says gruffly, tiredly, brokenly. “You can get me a drink.”

He nods and disappears. Minutes later he’s back, and passes her a bottle someone likely had hidden in their desks. It’s shitty beer, the cheap kind the cadets buy for a yuan and drink after class, but she doesn’t care. She tilts the bottle and lets the alcohol stream into her mouth, and down her throat. With her empty stomach, it’s only matter of time before it will numb her into blissful oblivion.

Eighteen and a half years of work, hours of meetings and withdrawals and makeshift sobriety chips lined up along her mantle, gifted to her quietly by the world’s otherwise most exuberant man….all gone in an instant.

Just like her bending.


	2. Game 1: White Jade

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry in advance for the pain! Updates will be once a week after this.

# Chapter 1

She hadn’t noticed it at first, her reliance on alcohol.

Everyone on the police force drank; it was just a part of the culture, a few beers or a couple of shots after a long week of work, where everyone gathered at the police bar after their shift and drank in hopes of a better tomorrow. After her fight with Su and Mom, her unit was all Lin had—she followed the Sergeants everywhere and took her Lieutenant’s word as gospel. So naturally she went with them to the bars after long shifts, where they all kicked back and had a drink and talked about their days.

She finally got some semblance of normalcy, and she was able to ignore her mother completely in favor for her beat and the guys in her unit. She didn’t have to see her mom for days, weeks even. It was nice, simple. She felt like she was where she belonged.

And then her mother retired, and like Su, Toph left the city suddenly and disappeared to Spirits knows where.

Lin was incensed.

_“I can’t believe her!” Lin practically screamed, slamming her fists into the table so hard it made the dishes rattle._

_Tenzin glanced nervously at the other diners, who had turned to stare at them after Lin’s outburst. “Lin, please,” he murmured nervously, the ink of his freshly acquired Masters tattoos shining lightly with sweat. He tried to place a hand on her shoulder, to placate her, but she shrugged it off angrily and reached for her beer._

_“Don’t you dare take her side, Tenzin,” she growled around the lip of the bottle._

_“I’m not,” her boyfriend said as she took a swig and let the rest of blessedly bitter liquid quell her frayed nerves. “I just think maybe you should try and understand how tough it is for her—”_

_“Tough?” Lin repeated in disbelief, her anger flaring. “Tough?! You know what’s tough, Tenzin? Being the oldest daughter of Toph fucking Beifong, the only Beifong left at the Police Department. At least when she was around, she was a distraction. Nobody fucking stared at me, whispered behind my back when they thought I couldn’t hear. But the shit she pulled with Su is the worst kept secret at the station. Everyone wonders if I’m going to end up like her.”_

_“The greatest earthbender in the world?” Tenzin asked hopefully._

_“A crooked cop!” the metalbender practically spat, and slammed her empty bottle down on the table._

_Tenzin worried his hands in his lap but said nothing. Lin ordered another beer._

The occasional drink after a long shift eventually became a nightcap to quiet her nerves—not all the time, just on the rough days, when the other beat cops hazed her or asked her inappropriate questions about Tenzin’s dick. It was infuriating, but there wasn’t much else she could do about it. She had gotten written up for the one time she had tried to cope ‘healthily’, which looked like her destroying half the training room and almost killing the officer she was sparring with after he’d made a lewd comment about her hips. So she turned to alcohol when she needed to calm her temper, when she couldn’t handle the pressure of being _Officer Beifong_ , just a little bit here and there to take the edge off.

And then there were the nights when she all alone in her sad little apartment, Tenzin away on some official Air Nation business with Aang, and she needed to get _some_ semblance of sleep before going into the station for her shift. So she’d pour herself a shot of baijiu and down it while standing at the kitchen sink, staring into the drain, utterly disgusted with herself and the world and her position in it.

Despite this, she was good at her job. She walked her beat and climbed the ladder. She took rookies in under her wing, taught them the ropes, and was the best fighter on the force—and the most organized, too. She always had her paperwork in on time.

She got promoted; first to Sergeant, then to Lieutenant. Birthdays came and went, the seasons passing at breakneck pace, but she didn’t notice. She was too busy—running her unit of officers under Lieutenant Wong, rooting out syndicated crime, then taking control of her assigned borough when she made Lieutenant.

That, of course, brought about its own problems.

 _“When will I just stop being_ her _daughter?” Lin asked plaintively to her boyfriend as she paced around the meditation pavilion, away from the prying ears of Tenzin’s parents and, perhaps most importantly, his siblings. “They act like it was a fucking pity promotion. I’ve earned it! I was the best candidate in my class, I aced the Lieutenant exam! The only person as good as me was Saikhan and he—”_

_“Got assigned to Dragon Flats, you’ve said,” Tenzin said patiently._

_“And where am I?” Lin asked bitterly, kicking at the wooden boards with the toe of her officer boots. “Turtleduck Gardens.”_

_Tenzin said nothing._

_“They don’t disrespect him this way,” Lin continued on, anger bubbling under her skin. “They follow his every fucking order to a tee, because he’s a fucking man and not the uppity daughter of Toph Beifong.”_

_“If that’s the case, maybe you need to get the other Lieutenants on your side,” Tenzin suggested slowly, obviously trying to calm her down. “Have them act as backup.”_

_This only made her angrier._

_“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” she snapped at her boyfriend. “They’re all too busy with their own sectors, and I don’t need them to come in and clean up_ my own _damn unit. Can you fucking imagine?”_

_Lin ran a hand through her hair and spit angrily off the cliff and into the bushes below. “Spirits, I need a drink.”_

_“Well you won’t find one here,” her boyfriend said oh-so-carefully, alluding to the dry nature of the monastic island, “but I’d be happy to take you back to the city and—”_

_“I’ll just raid Uncle Sokka’s stash,” the metalbender interrupted and started back towards the house._

_“His what?!”_

_She gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “He won’t mind.”_

_-/-_

She split her life between the police force and Tenzin, late nights on shift, early mornings on Air Temple Island sparring with her boyfriend (and sometimes Aang, Kya, or even Bumi if she wanted a change of pace and they were around). Weekends were for sleeping and sex, the only other things that helped unwind her as much as alcohol. Sometimes, she’d sit on the stairs to the temple with Aang in the late afternoon or early evening, a pallet of watercolors between them, drawing the birds and the trees or the bay or Republic City itself.

She managed to get the men at work under control. It only took her she challenging her entire cadre of Sergeants to a round in the practice ring, in front of the rest of her subordinates, the Spirits, and everybody…and winning.

Of course she had won.

Like she would have fucking lost to some upstarts who didn’t even know a key from a cable.

The beat cops had been impressed. So had her Captain. Two years after her promotion to Lieutenant, she got called into his office at Headquarters.

_She walked down the familiar halls, metal boots clinking against the concrete floors, until she reached the proper floor. “Lieutenant Beifong to see Captain Wong,” she told the secretary at the mouth of the bullpen._

_She popped up from her desk and went off to see if the Captain was available; he was. The woman, who Lin was fairly certain was called Bo, showed her into Captain Wong’s office, where he was seated behind his desk._

_Captain Wong was a man of middling age with impressive muttonchops and equally impressive eyebrows. He was about fifteen years older than Lin, and since her mother’s departure from the department, he’d been watching out for her. Most Captains were benders, and Captain Wong was no exception. He wore the light grey uniform of an officer, but the silver bars that indicated his captaincy glimmered near his throat._

_He smiled up at her as she entered. “Ah, Lieutenant Beifong, just the woman I’d like to see.”_

_The only woman, Lin thought bitterly. Of the hundreds of active police officers, she was the only female officer who wasn’t a beat cop. She settled into parade rest, her hands clasped behind her back, and waited to see what Captain Wong had to say._

_“You’re aware there’s a position for Captain available?” he asked, gesturing for her to sit._

_She didn’t out of principle._

_“Yes, sir. The metalbending division.”_

_“Have you considered applying?”_

_Lin froze. “Sir?”_

_“I can think of no-one more qualified for the position.”_

_“But I’ve only been a Lieutenant for two years,” she spluttered. “You have to have six to apply.”_

_“Your Chief Beifong’s daughter,” Captain Wong said as if that answered everything. She felt the usual rage that came with that label bubbling up, but she kept it in check as he continued on. “You’ve whipped the Turtleduck Gardens team into shape in record time and have been metalbending practically before you could crawl.”_

_“But—”_

_“I can think of no-one more qualified for the position,” Captain Wong repeated, and held out a manila folder; she took it numbly and inspected the contents. It was an application for the position, and an already-written letter of recommendation with Captain Wong’s signature and seal._

_“We don’t need an officer like you rotting away in Turtleduck Gardens,” he told her seriously, pointing at her with a pen to accentuate his point. “You’ve got the brains, the drive, and the experience. You need to be downtown, where you can train the new cadets and oversee the Metalbending unit. Apply, Beifong. Get Avatar Aang to write you a second letter.”_

_“But I—”_

_“It’s not a request.”_

_Lin closed the folder and gritted her teeth. “Yes, sir.”_

_-/-_

The move to Captain came with a lot of perks; a cushier salary, which meant she was able to move to a nicer apartment, and a hard cutoff of six o’clock (when she felt like abiding by it). It also came with challenges; all of the issues she’d had when she’d taken over at Turtleduck Flats were amplified tenfold, compounded with the fact the press had caught wind of her promotion and were slavering over the symbolism like a polarbear dog over hotcakes.

_“I can’t take it anymore,” she hissed to Saikhan, after they were tailed to the police bar by reporters after a shift. The vulture-foxes were only stopped when Saikhan threw up an earthen wall in front of the door to keep them from being followed inside. “You know what they say about me.”_

_Saikhan, who was still only a Lieutenant but had been moved to the division by Lin as a condition of her acceptance, nodded. They sat at the bar and he motioned at the bartender for two of their usual._

_“They follow me around, they harass the cadets, and now they’re after the officers.”_

_“If they say anything, they’ll have to deal with me,” Saikhan told her reassuringly._

_“I’m not stupid, Saikhan. I know what they say about me when they think I can’t here.”_

_“And you know it’s all ostrich horse shit.” The bartender came by with their drinks and Saikhan pushed hers in front of her. “You got the job because you aced the Lieutenant exams, made the laziest division one of the best in the entire department, and can outbend most of the Assistant Chiefs in a one-on-one.”_

_“I got the job because my mother was Toph fucking Beifong,” Lin spit bitterly, and wrapped her hands around her tankard, “and they all know it._ I _know it, Saikhan, you don’t have to bullshit me.”_

_Her friend sighed and reached out for his own glass. He took a long drink of his beer then said gravely, “You need to blow off some steam or you’re going to burn out. Why don’t we go down to the training room at lunch tomorrow for a quick sparring match?”_

_“I can’t, I have a meeting with the Assistant Chiefs.” A pause. “And then after work I have to meet with my knucklehead boyfriend and help him with his stupid campaign speech.”_

_“I don’t know why he’s bothering,” Saikhan quipped dryly. “It’s not like there’s anyone else in the Air Nation to take Avatar Aang’s council spot.”_

_Lin scowled into her glass, trying to hide the sudden pang of guilt that stabbed into her stomach. On top of everything else the press had been writing about her, there had been rumors swirling amongst the gossip rags that Lin was letting her job get in the way of her “_ true” _position. The version of her life everyone thought should come to pass, where she married Tenzin and quit her job, and popped out babies until there were enough airbenders to have a prayer of rebuilding the Air Nomads._

 _The thought made her sick. Why should_ she _have to give up her job, her career—which, despite everything the Universe was throwing at her, she managed to be good at, and even liked—just to bring some sick sort of quasi-balance to the world?_

_Lin picked up her tankard and drained the contents, then immediately ordered a bottle of baijiu. As she poured herself a glass and took a drink, she didn’t notice Saikhan’s worried glance over the rim of his still half-drunk beer._

_-/-_

The first thing she did when she came home was take a shot. It was the only way she could find the courage to make dinner without vibrating out of her skin at the thought of going to work the next morning. The bottle sat on a tray on her sideboard, and as soon as she threw off her cable pouches she upended a clean shot glass and poured herself a drink.

_“I really don’t know why you have the need to do that,” Tenzin said one evening when he came over after observing cadet drills._

_“It’s bracing,” Lin told him severely as she poured the drink immediately after kicking off her boots. “Do you want one?”_

_Tenzin stared at her._

_“Suit yourself.” She knocked back the shot with a gasp, then practically ripped open the front of her uniform coat, exposing her undershirt. “Thank Spirits. Today was awful.”_

_Tenzin looked like he very much wanted to protest, but he took the shot glass from his girlfriend as she wriggled out of her Captain’s coat and hung it up on the hooks over the shoes. He swished himself and his thick Airbending robes into the kitchen as Lin rolled out her neck and eyed the bottle on the sideboard, considering a second shot._

_She heard the icebox open and her boyfriend’s voice floated out from around the corner. “What did you have planned for dinner?”_

_“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh, and left the bottle in the hallway to follow Tenzin into the kitchen. “Pick something.”_

_“There’s almost nothing here,” Tenzin grumbled, poking around in the contents of her nearly-empty icebox._

_“I’ve been eating out a lot,” the metalbender said lamely. “It’s been busy.”_

_“Clearly.” He straightened up with a sigh. “I know you’re tired. I’ll run to the market and get some supplies for something simple, okay?”_

_“Sure.”_

_He moved in and gave her a gentle kiss, the whiskers of his beard tickling her face. “I’ll be back before you know it.”_

_He picked up his boots at the door and stepped out the front door to put them on. Lin stood in the kitchen in nothing but her undershirt and uniform pants, and felt the vibrations through the floor of him putting them on and then walking down the hallway for the staircase._

_As soon as he was gone, Lin retrieved her shot glass from the sink and poured herself a second shot._

_._

_._

_._

_Lin massaged the migraine growing at the back of her neck as she stepped into her office and closed the door. She’d been dealing with deliberately belligerent Lieutenants all day, and she was about to wring their useless necks until they no longer were her problem. Another set of fucking men almost a decade older than her who said CAP-tin BEI-fong like it was a curse, purposefully stressing the syllables in her last name to make sure she knew what they thought of her._

_She kicked the leg of her desk in frustration, then slammed herself into her chair and tried to focus on the shift requests on her desk. Paperwork usually calmed her down, but not today—she was too keyed up, and her mind kept replaying the sneer on Lieutenant Gong’s face over and over again until her stomach twisted like it did when she was going to be sick._

_She pushed away from her desk and paced angrily. Her gaze fell on the bag of groceries Uncle Sokka had left there, the ones she’d found in her office when she’d come in that morning. They’d been doing that recently, the whole family, probably because Tenzin had run his big mouth about her not having groceries_ one time _._

_She was almost thirty two, goddamit! Now everyone thought she needed to be coddled like a child._

_Despite her misgivings, there was a familiar bottle sticking out of the bag. She went over to pull it out to read the label. It was Kuang’s—her favorite baijiu, apparently a gift from her favorite uncle to go along with the groceries. She hesitated for a moment, her hand on the cap; she shouldn’t drink on duty, but there was no other way to calm her nerves, not when she felt like this._

_She didn’t have anything else to do today besides meetings and paperwork…_

_So Lin twisted the top off and took a slug._

_._

_._

_._

_The explosion at the docks came just after one, and she scrambled her entire division as soon as the first reports came in._

_“I want eyes on every square inch on the harbor,” she barked at her Lieutenants, and Saikhan saluted and started divvying up tasks amongst his fellows to hand down to the beat cops._

_She ran back to her office for her Captain’s jacket and cables, which she had taken off to eat. Her glass of baijiu was still on the desk, along with the remains of her lunch, where she had left them as the radio in the bullpen had screamed to life with the four-alarm response._

_She looked at the glass and grimaced. She didn’t have time to pour it back in the bottle, so she downed the incriminating evidence before sweeping her coat and cable belt off the back of her chair._

_“Let’s go, Lin,” Saikhan said with a wave of his hand, and she followed him up to the roof, still buttoning her jacket and cinching her belt tight over her hips. The streets were too thick with midday traffic, so it had been decided that all available metalbenders would cable to the scene to keep the streets free for ambulances and fire trucks._

_She was fine until halfway to the scene, when all of a sudden her vision swam and she missed wrapping her cables around the embedded hook she was aiming for. A rookie mistake, but with a bloodstream full of baijiu, it was one she made without noticing. Her momentum carried her forward and when her arm swung into nothingness, she yelped in brief panic. She didn’t have time to react, though, before a cable wrapped her flailing leadline and hauled her up to the closest rooftop._

_She stumbled and fell to her knees, gravel and blacktop biting through her uniform pants as she coughed past the sudden knot of fear in her stomach._

_Metal boots clanked noisily down next to her and a familiar voice said hurriedly, “Captain!”_

_Saikhan._

_He knelt beside her with a worried expression. “Are you okay?”_

_“I’m fine,” she spat, and pushed herself to her feet. She did a quick inventory of her extremities; nothing felt broken. She would have known if it was._

_“You never miss, Lin.”_

_“I’m aware of that,_ Lieutenant,” _she snapped as brushed herself off hurriedly. She could feel herself shaking—whether it was from the alcohol in her system or her sudden brush with a situation that very quickly could have become life threatening, she didn’t know._

 _Her line of work was dangerous, sure, but she’d become a master metalbender at age twenty. She didn’t just_ miss _a cable loop embedded into a skyscraper like a total fucking amateur. She shook out her limbs, trying to quell the sudden wave of anxiety that for once had_ nothing to do with her mother _or Lin’s place in that legacy._

_“Get going, Saikhan.”_

_“Sorry?” he asked, worried expression still knitted across his brow._

_“I said go,” she told him sharply. “Get to the scene.”_

_“Are you sure?”_

_“That’s an_ order, _Lieutenant. Go! I’ll be there.”_

_Saikhan backed off, probably because the tone in her voice brokered no argument. He snapped her a quick salute, then pulled out his cables and was quickly swinging across the city like Lin usually did._

_She watched him go, her head still spinning. She hadn’t eaten enough for lunch, and the alcohol was quickly taking its toll. Dammit. Fuck._

_She stepped up to the edge of the skyscraper and tried to cable loop again, but missed. Again. She watched the line fall between the buildings and the pit in her stomach grew._

_She retracted her cables and stared at the column of smoke rising above the city in front of her. She could see metalbending officers converging on the scene from all over the city and felt sick._

_She had to get there. She had to go take command of the scene. It was her job._

_So she pulled out the bison whistle she kept in her pocket for emergencies, and blew._


	3. Game 1: Boat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always to Linguini for beta-reading this, and being the WORST (best!) enabler in the world. She's the reason this fic is happening.

She had handled it. She had gotten a bison, and she had handled it. She had made it through the afternoon with no-one the wiser, and it had given her the time to get the alcohol out of her system. By the time the emergency was over, she was sharp-head once again.

Returning the bison, however, was not as easy as simply blowing a whistle.

Thankfully, the bison, whose name she didn’t even know, seemed to know the way back. It carried her faithfully back to Air Temple Island, and she got it back into its barn as night settled over Republic City, unnoticed.

Or so she had thought.

_When she turned around after putting the bison in its barn, Aang was standing there._

_“Hello Lin,” he said gently, but that didn’t stop her from jumping nearly a foot in the air. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”_

_“H-hi, Uncle Aang,” she said nervously, her pulse hammering in her throat, and she quickly closed the barn door behind her._

_He watched her with interest. “So it was you who borrowed the bison.”_

_“I—yes—sorry,” she stumbled, unlike her. Maybe she was drunker than she thought. “It was an emergency.”_

_“Yes, I saw the smoke,” he replied, and looked out over the bay towards the docks where the embers of the explosion and subsequent fire were still smoldering. “You’ve had an eventful day.”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Why don’t you come inside and tell me about it?” Aang asked, gesturing towards the family quarters._

_“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” she said, desperate for an excuse to go home._

_“Nonsense. Katara is still downtown at Yue General tending the wounded, and Tenzin is attending to his new duties. My presence in the city would only be a distraction so please, join me for some tea. I insist.”_

_She hesitated, uncertain if Aang had an alternative motive. But she was tired, bone dead, and she wasn’t sure if she could even_ make _it back to her apartment in the first place._

_“Okay.”_

_Aang smiled and gestured for her to lead the way. Lin helped him gather the tea things—the teapot and cups, the leaves, the spoons, the strainer. Once it was all settled, he said,_

_“Let’s take this out to the portico. It’s a beautiful night.”_

_She carried the tray dutifully after him, feeling for all the world like a small child again. They settled on the steps facing the bridge, and Aang carefully began to prepare the tea. He heated the water with a touch of his hand to the pot, then quietly went about spooning loose-leaf tea into the pot to steep._

_“This tea set was given to me by Iroh for my fifteenth birthday,” he told her as he carefully set the lid of the pot on to capture the steam. “I almost refused, as my heritage dictates I’m not allowed but the barest possessions, but he insisted. A gift from the Fire Nation to the last remaining Air Nomad, he said. It wasn’t my people, or my temple, but it was what he could give. It was the kindness of the act. Do you understand?”_

_She nodded._

_“There is something bothering you,” Aang said bluntly, after they had sat in silence for a few minutes, “something that makes you feel like you have to sneak around on this island where you grew up.”_

_“I—”_

_“You do not have to tell me,” the Avatar continued gently, “but it would be a kindness if you did. I would like to help, if I could, untwist the pain you are carrying in your heart.”_

_Lin pressed her lips together and looked across the courtyard, at the temple and the meditation pavilion beyond. She clasped her hands between her knees as if that would stop them from shaking. “I don’t want to talk about it.”_

_“That’s alright.” Aang bent the steam rising from the spout of the pot and made little shapes, animals and humanoid figures, which he sent sprinting across the courtyard before letting them drift into the sky and to fade away. It had been her favorite trick when she was little, Kya’s too. Now it just hurt._

_“I’m too old for that, Uncle Aang,” she said tiredly, and set her chin on her knees._

_“Nobody’s too old for fun.”_

_He lifted the lid on the pot to check the leaves and, satisfied with their steep, set the strainer in a mug and carefully poured the steaming liquid in. The fragrant leaves collected in the metal mesh, and the air around them filled with a deep, smokey, grass-like scent._

_“This smells like longjing,” Aang observed as he stopped pouring and moved the strainer to a second cup._

_“It is.”_

_He hummed and handed her the first cup, which she accepted. She wrapped her fingers around it, savoring the comfort of the earthenware under her touch. She could feel the bits of stone underneath the glaze vibrating happily as they soaked up the heat of the tea._

_“I hope that’s alright.”_

_“It’s your favorite,” the Avatar said simply as he poured his own. He then collected the remaining tea leaves in the pot with a globule of water and let it splatter on the ground. “There. Now it won’t over-steep.”_

_Lin tried to force a smile, but couldn’t. She hunched herself over her mug, and stared towards the now-glittering city. Aang sipped his tea quietly beside her and stretched his legs out, sinking his heels into the ground of the courtyard._

_Lin raised her cup to her lips and sipped. It really was good—these were leaves that had probably been gifted to Aang by some ambassador or another, so they were of high quality and still relatively fresh. Even with her Captain’s salary, she couldn’t afford to drink longjing more than once a month, especially with her growing baijiu habit._

_At the thought of_ that _, she lowered her mug and pressed her lips together. She looked over her Uncle, who had his tea cup cradled in his bending-weathered hands and was staring out over the compound and the city with a soft smile on his face._

_If he could be calm, and serene, and happy, why couldn’t she?_

_She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat and forced out, “I fucked up, Aang.”_

_He looked over to her, his grey eyes concerned. “How so?”_

_“I—” she hesitated, then gave up. “I missed a snap, at work today, on my way to the scene. It was stupid but I—I had a drink—at lunch—and I didn’t eat enough, so it—I almost fell, and if Saikhan hadn’t caught me, I—”_

_She stopped, aware she was rambling. It all had fallen out before she could stop it. She sunk her chin down to her chest, ashamed._

_“I see,” Aang said finally, gently. “And I imagine this drink was alcoholic in nature?”_

_“Yes,” she all but whispered._

_Aang was quiet for a long time. “And for how long have you been drinking alcohol at lunch, Lin?”_

_Lin sunk her face down to her knees and didn’t respond. She felt the shame creeping up the back of her neck and she closed her eyes, trying to focus on the tiny particles of earth baked together in her hand. They felt like she did—tense, buzzing, strung out._

_She heard the sound of ceramic on stone and felt Aang shift beside her, wrap on arm around her shoulders and pull her stiff body into his._

_“There’s nothing to be ashamed about,” Aang said gently._

_She felt the sob come up from her chest before she could stop it, and suddenly she was crying silently into the linens of Aang’s cloak. Her shoulders shook gently, the shame and the guilt and the fear absolutely overcoming her. She felt him gently pry the cup of tea out of her hand and set it to the side, and then he wrapped both of his arms around her as she broke._

_She wasn’t sure how long she cried for, tucked against Uncle Aang’s chest, his chin resting on the crown on her head as he gently stroked her hair._

_“Lin,” he said finally, after the sobs had mostly passed, “how can I help you?”_

_“I don’t know,” she whispered._

“Can _I help you?”_

_She sniffled, but nodded, and he smiled._

_-/-_

The first thing Aang had done after that was reheated her tea with his firebending, and then he’d made her drink it. Then they’d spent the better part of two hours talking on the steps to the portico, Aang asking quiet questions about her drinking habits, and her stressors, and her fears. He didn’t say a thing about the effects of her mother on her, which was unlike him, but Lin found it a welcome respite.

So she told him, in biting tones, about what it was like to be the only Beifong, the only woman, at the station and about the target painted on her back. How it felt like how she was struggling uphill against her mother’s long shadow while simultaneously being lifted undeservedly by it from behind. She told him about the stress, and, with no little shame, how she drank to cope.

They drank the tea pot dry that night, and Aang had made another. And then then talked some more, long into the night, until they saw Oogi clipping her way across the bay towards the island.

_“To bed, I think,” Aang said gently, and carefully began to put the tea things away. “You’ll be safest here on the island tonight. Your room is already ready for you. Go, I won’t tell Tenzin you’re here.”_

_He knew her better than she thought._

_Lin padded the back way to her room in the women’s dormitory, out of sight of the plaza and the approaching bison. When she slid open the screen to the cell she frequented, she found the acolytes had set out a pair of pajamas and turned down her covers in anticipation of her stay. She changed, as she settled in bed she heard Oogi land with a muffled thump in the courtyard, then the muffled voices of Aang greeting his wife and son._

_When she woke the next morning, it was late. Far later than she normally got up. The sun streamed in through the window._

_“Fuck,” she swore, and stumbled to her feet. She was late to work: horribly, horribly late, and she had a killer migraine that caused her to trip off the platform and onto the floor._

_She knelt there for a moment, stupefied. She felt shaky, like the way she got when she hadn’t had her maintenance drink. She looked about and found her uniform had disappeared, but there was a note pinned to the bamboo frame of her cell door._

_She snatched it from the pin and flicked it open._

_‘Lin,_

_When you’re awake, and after you’ve had breakfast, meet me in my study?_

_-Aang_

_P.S. Both Tenzin and Katara will be in the city until late tonight._

_P.P.S. There is an infusion of willowbark tucked into the pocket of your tunic.’_

_She looked at her feet, and someone had laid new, clean clothes in Earth Kingdom colors just inside the screen. She picked them up and inspected them—they were not hers, but they were her size, and most importantly they_ weren’t _her work clothes._

_She looked around, but her uniform pants, undershirt, and Captain’s jacket had vanished without a trace. Lin swore again and shook out the gifted Earth Kingdom clothes; a willowbark tablet, wrapped neatly in paper, fell to the floor. She quickly undid the twine and popped it into her mouth, desperate for something to ease the pain of her headache._

_It was bitter when she crunched it between her teeth, so she chased it with a glass of water from the pitcher on her bedside table. She hadn’t seen it the night before. Was she really_ that _addled?_

_She slipped on the pants and the tunic, tied the belt tight around her waist, and pinned her hair back simply. Then she padded barefoot from the women’s dormitory to the acolyte dining hall, through which she slunk quietly and scrounged fruit from the bowls still left on the tables._

_She ate them, but didn’t particularly enjoy them. They were fresh, likely brought in the day before from the countryside markets, but her stomach was queasy. It also felt like there is something wrong with her skin; her hands and feet felt clammy. She wondered idly if she had a low-grade fever._

_Aang was in his study, just like he promised. He was working on correspondence when she arrived, so she lingered in the doorway until he set down his pen and carefully blotted the excess ink from the parchment._

_“Good morning, Lin,” he said kindly. “Please, come in.”_

_She did and took the seat Aang offered._

_She had rarely had the chance to sit in Aang’s study. It was all light wood and gold accents, with red panels and a small altar to the side. The octagonal window looked out over the island, over the bay, and onto Republic City._

_Aang folded and sealed his correspondence with a wax seal that looked like the symbol of the Air Nation. She watched as he carefully wrote out the address on the unmarked side, then set his pen back in his inkwell and the letter on a frighteningly large stack in a basket next to his desk._

_The he turned all of his attention to her._

_“How are you feeling, Lin?” he asked, and it felt like his grey eyes were burrowing into her soul._

_She grimaced. “Like shit.”_

_To her surprise, Aang immediately began to laugh—but not at her, clearly, at her response. “At least you’re honest about it,” he said with a smile. “I’ve done some reading, and I have come to understand that’s expected.”_

_Lin felt antsy, like she wanted to rock back and forth in her chair. She jiggled a foot, a trait very unlike her, and glanced out the window again._

_“Here,” Aang said, and reached for a teapot sitting behind his desk. This one was metal, with inscribed Water Tribe designs, and he heated it with firebending like he had the night before. He carefully poured her a cup and said, “This tea should help you with the withdrawal symptoms.”_

_“Withdrawal?”_

_“Your body has gotten used to relying on the alcohol to survive,” Aang explained gently, and nudged the cup towards her over his deck. She took it and sniffed—it smelled disgusting, like a mix between black tea, rotten kelp, and the meat market._

_She looked up at him and her expression was clearly so plaintive that he said, “If you don’t drink it, you will only feel worse. Your body is going to have to recalibrate itself to existing without alcohol, and from my research it is not a pleasant experience.”_

_She swallowed. “What are the…symptoms?”_

_“You have the shaking and the headache, yes?”_

_She nodded._

_“Next will come the nausea, and the insomnia, and the irritability. You most likely will become paranoid and confused, and will have an elevated heartbeat and blood pressure. If you are lucky that is all that you will experience.”_

_“…And if I’m not?”_

_Aang clasped his hands over his chest and looked at her seriously. “Hallucinations, night terrors, seizures, and delirium are all common side effects of alcohol withdrawal. The tea will help minimize the symptoms, but we won’t know for sure about what side effects you will or will not experience until you have fully detoxed.”_

_Lin stared down at the cup in her hands and into the dark liquid within. “How do you know all this?”_

_“My wife is a master healer,” Aang said with some amusement. “She has an entire library full of resources on the topic.”_

_Oh. Lin felt stupid._

_“I think it is best that you stay on Air Temple Island until your body has readjusted,” he said gently as she stared into her cup. “You will be safe here, away from the city and most important, away from any temptation to drink.”_

_She wet her bottom lip with her tongue but otherwise stayed quiet._

_“Katara will be on hand in case something goes wrong,” Aang continued. “Normally, most individuals detox in hospitals, or in special centers for substance abuse, but I think with the best healer in the world in residence we can bend the rules.”_

_“Did you tell her?” Lin asked, and was ashamed of how weak her voice sounded._

_Aang shook his head. “That is a conversation for you and her to have.”_

_“I don’t want to have it,” Lin said fiercely. “I don’t want—she’ll just—if she knows, Mom knows,” she finished lamely._

_Really, she didn’t want Aunt Katara to hover. Katara was good at that, hovering, and Lin hated it._

_She didn’t want anybody to see what she had become._

_“I will only call her in to treat you if there is a life threatening situation,” Aang promised, and she nodded her acquiescence. “Good. Now from what I understand, your withdrawal symptoms will last anywhere between five to ten days.”_

_Lin paled. “But I have to—”_

_“You have to focus on your health,” Aang said sternly. “I have already called Chief Kang and explained that you came to the island very sick last night, and will continue to recover here until you are ready to return to work. I did not tell him the extent of your illness, nor the particulars, but I was assured you should take all the time that you need to recover and that Lieutenant Saikhan would take excellent care of your division until you can return.”_

_“You called the Chief?” Lin asked, aghast. She felt her temper bubbling up again, hot and sweet and furious. “You had no right!”_

_“Lin—”_

_“I’m not a child!” she spat, standing but immediately swayed under the weight of her own body. She was dizzy, horribly so, and if Aang hadn’t stood and stabilized her, she would have fallen._

_“You’re not a child,” he agreed, and guided her gently back into her chair, “but you need help.”_

_Lin pressed her lips together to keep from saying something she regretted to Aang. She was angry, and frustrated, and there some part of her that was very, very afraid._

_She hated taking time off work, she hated being sick, and she hated the unknown. She hated this entire damn situation, and she hated herself for letting it get to this point._

_“It’s okay, Lin,” Aang said softly. “You don’t have to do this alone.”_

_She wrinkled her nose and looked away, out the window, because she couldn’t stand to look at her Uncle’s face._

_“Since your symptoms have already started,” the Avatar continued gently, “it will most likely be only a few hours until you begin to enter the peak. We need to prepare your body for the trial it has ahead, and it starts with that tea.”_

_She looked between him and noxious tea in her hands and knew she would hate every last fucking second._

_“I’m not drinking the fucking tea,” she snapped._

_Aang raised an eyebrow as if she were a truculent teenager._

_Lin grimaced and, in a fit of desperation, drank the fucking tea._

_._

_._

_._

Alcohol withdrawal was, without a doubt, the biggest bitch Lin Beifong had ever had the misfortune of encountering… and that was up to and including having her sister slap her across the face with her own cables.

It was agony.

She spent four days curled in a room tucked deep in the woman’s dormitory of Air Temple Island, shivering, sweating, and alone. She spent those miserable ninety-six hours feverish, falling in and out of an extremely troubled sleep and only waking to vomit. Her body ached, old injuries and joints screaming as the muscles in her mangled right cheek jumped on their own accord.

Every few hours, Aang would let himself in quietly and gently tip liquids into her mouth. Rich broths, water, detox fluids, and ginger and willowbark tea were on the menu, but she was barely conscious of the liquids let alone their flavor.

Half of the time, the detox fluids (she refused to call that potion a tea) made her puke as soon as they went down.

The hallucinations started the second night.

_It was night, and Lin had been fading in and out of consciousness for the past hour and a half. She could hear the sounds of the acolytes eating dinner, talking and enjoying each other’s company, but the noises were distant. It was like she was hearing the noise through feet and feet of water after it passed through an echo chamber, and it made her aching, spinning head even worse._

_She rolled over and emptied the minimal contents of her stomach into the bucket._

_“Ha.”_

_She snapped her head up; there, swimming in her vision, was her mother. She was in her police uniform, her hair up in its bun like it had been every day Lin had known her, and her arms were crossed over her chest._

_“Ch-Chief.”_

_“You call yourself an officer?” Toph asked, her lip curling up in a derisive sneer. “Look at you.”_

_“Chief-I—”_

_“Don’t_ Chief _me, you aren’t worthy of that badge,” her mother told her._

_“B-But—I—”_

_“Don’t make excuses! Relying on alcohol to solve your problems? How dare call yourself a Beifong. You’re nothing a sniveling coward, Lin!” Toph spat on the floor, and the sound made Lin recoil back into the sheets. “Pathetic. Su could run a better department than you.”_

_Then Su materialized; sixteen year old Su, in the same outfit she’d been wearing when Lin had tried to arrest her._

_“You hear that?” her little sister asked, strutting up to the bed and leaning over her, arms placed cockily on her side. “I’ve always been mom’s favorite.”_

_“That’s a lie!”_

_Su simpered in all of her annoying, teenaged girl attitude. “Don’t worry about coming back to work. I’ve replaced you,_ Captain. _You’re expendable Lin, just like you’ve always bee—“_

_“No!”_

_She shot straight up of the bed and both Su and Toph disappeared, but she could still hear their disembodied laughter even as her vertigo made the room sway and swirl._

_“Lin!” a different voice, feminine, concerned, said urgently, and there was a cool hand on her face, a hand on her shoulder, pressing her gently back into the sweat-soaked sheets._

_“It’s okay, Lin,” Aang’s voice murmured, “you’re okay. You’re safe.”_

_Lin fell back into unconsciousness as the room spun and glowed around her._

Her hallucinations for the next few days had been much of the same, with a rotating cast of characters that mostly consisted of her mother and sister, the Chief, and Saikhan, but occasionally starred Tenzin and his family. Her days blurred together, a haze of hot days and nights and afternoons interrupted by hallucinations and tempered only Aang’s quiet voice, and the press of cool ceramics to her lips.

Her fever finally broke on the fifth day, and for the first time in months Lin slept soundly.

_She woke up six days after her arrival on Air Temple Island to the sound of children screeching excitedly in the training arena. She was weak, but she managed to sit herself up and drag herself to the window. The sight of Aang balancing the acolyte children on air balls brought a smile to even her cold-hearted heart._

_She staggered out of bed, feeling exhausted, but not dizzy. For the first time in days she didn’t have a headache. She changed slowly into new clothes laid out by her door by someone, likely the acolytes, and stumbled down the hall to the bathroom._

_She peed, then went to wash her hands. She froze above the sink; she almost didn’t recognize the face in the mirror._

_She was haggard, like she’d worked a double on no sleep. Her already thin face was sunken, as if she’d lost weight, and there were deep bags under her green eyes. Her dark hair was a rat’s nest, even though someone had plaited it for her at some point during her recovery._

_She set about finding the cubby with its supply roll the acolytes kept for her and combed her hair, which was a challenge, and splashed cool water on her face. Then she stepped carefully out of the dormitory to see about getting something to settle the gnawing hunger in her stomach._

_Aang saw her exit, and his face lit up in the way only Aang’s could._

_“Good morning,” he said cheerfully, leaving the children to play amongst themselves. “How are you feeling?”_

_“Like death,” she told him honestly. “But…clear.”_

_Aang’s smile was radiant. “Wonderful. Are you hungry?”_

_She nodded, and he guided her towards the kitchen._

They shared another pot of longjing, and Aang plied her with cloud-like, cheesy bread puffs, vegetable dumplings, and fruit until she could barely move.

And then, when she was good and ready, they discussed her recovery plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I couldn't find a place to fit this in: I definitely had a thought that Lin's hallucinations of Toph during her detox were Lin's body reacting to Toph reaching out through the Swamp via through the vines. Lin's body reacts by giving her a nightmare so she's having a nightmare/hallucinating all this awful shit Toph is saying about her because she feels her mom's spirit energy but can't distinguish why. 
> 
> You know. In case you needed more pain. :)
> 
> (Also even in her sleep, Lin never calls her Mom, only Chief.)
> 
> Also, Katara almost definitely was aware of this entire process. She figured something was up and cornered Aang (who could never lie to her). The cool hand on Lin's face at the end of her nightmare and the glowing light was her. (This will come up later.) You should never detox without the attention of a professional.


	4. Game 1: Jasmine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin struggles with sobriety, and finds an ally in someone she always should have suspected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My greatest thanks to Linguini for her amazing beta skills and being the best soundboard a butch could ask for. Also for Hui, who y'all finally get to meet in this one.

_ She had dreaded returning to her apartment, but at her request Aang had packed her quietly off the island so as to not have to run into Tenzin or Katara and explain her presence or appearance. Now, standing outside her apartment door, her hands were shaking with anxiety. She shouldn’t have worried though; when she had stepped inside, her bottle of baijiu on the sideboard and all of its shot glasses had disappeared. _

_ The bag on her shoulder thumped to the ground, and she ran into the kitchen to check her cupboards. _

_ The bottles of alcohol were gone, replaced instead by canned goods, containers of dry goods, various treats Aang knew she liked. The ice box was similar; it was like her wine bottles and case of beer had never existed, replaced instead with fresh vegetables and fruit, including a melon the size of her head. _

_ Lin stumbled back from the ice box and felt something akin to panic fluttering in her chest. It was all gone. _

_ Aang had told her he’d been there and cleaned her out, to remove the temptation and provide a fresh start, but the lack of bottles in her flat felt like a hole inside her. _

_ She turned around to the sink to get some water on her face, to calm herself down, but stopped short. There was an envelope propped against her backsplash, small and square and carefully folded. She picked it up and opened the flap; there was a card, and a small wooden disc. _

_ She turned, leaned against the counter, and tugged out the card. It was made of thick watercolor paper, and Aang had painted a river scene on it. It wasn’t a place she had ever seen before, but it was beautiful. She flipped it open and found a note written in his loopy, elegant hand. _

"Sobriety is like pai sho. First, you must ground yourself.”

_ She looked down at the token in her hand. It was a jasmine pai sho tile, likely from Aang’s own set. She flipped it over and found that Aang had carefully burned a single line into the hard wood. _

_ She swallowed and grasped the tile tightly, so hard it cut into her fingers and turned her fingertips while. She closed her eyes and, feeling stupid, breathed in, then out, just like her mother had taught her back when she had first learned how to earthbend. _

_ She didn’t believe in all that aura garbage that Kya constantly prattled on about, and she didn’t have the time of day for anybody who wanted to exalt the benefits of meditation. But as she stood there in her kitchen, eyes closed and focusing on her breath, she slowly felt her heart rate slow and the knot in her stomach slowly begin to unwind. _

_ Finally, she was calm enough to relax her grip on the tile. _

_ She looked down at it, then at the small painting, and sighed. She pushed off the counter, and set the tile and the watercolor carefully in the window. _

Okay. She was doing this.

-/-

_ She went back to work on Monday, where she found Aang had cleared out her office, too. Saikhan stepped into her office as she was setting her desk back to rights; Aang had tidied up for her, but in the process had moved everything. _

_ Saikhan rapped on the door with his fist to get her attention and she laid her pens out where they belonged. _

_ “Welcome back, Captain,” he said gruffly. _

_ Lin nodded curtly as she pulled her planner out of her top drawer and set it on the surface with a ‘fwap’ of leather on wood. Now if she could only find her damn ink. She tugged the first drawer on the side open, the second, and when neither of those produced, she tried the bottom drawer. Instead of a bottle of baijiu rolling to a stop against the face, it was her pot of ink. She stooped to grab it, which also conveniently hid her face from her Lieutenant. _

_ “Some flu,” he said carefully, and if she didn’t know any better, there was a testing note in his voice. “That why you were off last week?” _

_ She swallowed, and her hand pushed her bottom drawer, the now ex-alcohol drawer, closing it robotically. “Must have been.” _

_ He nodded once, sharply, as if that was good enough for him. “Good to have you back.” _

_ “Thank you, Lieutenant.” _

-/-

Aang was waiting for her after work on Friday, but of course he made it appear as if he had simply been passing by. She was grateful for his appearance; she had been in the process of leaving the office with Saikhan and her other Lieutenants and trying to figure out how to get out of going to the bar with them.

_ “Lin!” he said happily, as if he hadn’t seen her in months, and crossed the plaza to greet her. “I was wondering if I could steal you away for the evening?” _

_ “Of course,” she said, and shot what she hoped was a suitably apologetic look at Saikhan and the others. It was hard to tell what people wanted in her reactions sometimes, but they seemed to feel like her being borrowed by the Avatar was a good enough excuse. _

_ “Walk with me? Appa is around the corner.” _

_ Lin followed. Appa was indeed around the corner, laden down as if for a long journey. She frowned in confusion. “Are we going somewhere?” _

_ “Just me, I’m afraid,” Aang said apologetically. “There’s trouble in the Gintong Province and I have to leave immediately, so can’t stay all that long. But I wanted to give you this.” _

_ He reached into his robes and pulled out another square envelope, which she took and opened. Another watercolor, a sunset over the mountains, and another jasmine pai sho tile. She turned the watercolor over to read the back. _

“You must create new harmonies between yourself and the world around you, and guard your existing ones well."

_ She looked up at him. _

_ “You’ve made it a week,” Aang said gravely. “The hardest part is past you.” _

_ That’s a lie if I ever heard one, Lin thought, but carefully stuffed the watercolor and pai sho tile back into their envelope. _

_ “Thank you, Aang,” she said sincerely, and gave him a formal bow. _

_ His touch on her shoulder startled her; when she looked up, he smiled encouragingly at her. “You can do this, Lin.” _

-/-

Aang presents her with a third pai sho tile as a celebration of her first month of sobriety, and then a fourth, and then a fifth. The months pass buy, and with each she adds another watercolor and another pai sho tile to her backsplash. Each week she avoids going to the bar with her coworkers, citing Tenzin’s need for speech editing or Aang’s desire to watercolor with her or whatever fucking thing she can manage that sounds convincing.

She can tell Saikhan doesn’t buy it, because he frowns at her each time the way he does when he’s staring at politicians who bullshit at them.

But she keeps out of the bars. She fills her sudden free time with whatever she can to keep herself busy—teaching terse lessons at the metalbending academy, sparring with recruits, countless dinners at Air Temple Island (where Uncle Sokka’s stash magically vanishes and nobody ever mentions it again), training in the dojo, debates about new city policy with Tenzin, and quiet weekend trips with Uncle Aang out to the countryside to paint, when he’s home.

It doesn’t get better. Not really. She craves alcohol, sometimes so violently that it’s all she can do to keep herself at home. Those nights she packs herself off to Air Temple Island and curls close to Tenzin under the covers, damn the commute in the morning. She’s glad she’s too busy with paperwork and schedules to walk the beat, because she’s not sure she could. It’s bad enough walking by the bars on a Friday evening.

She’s doing fine. Not great, but okay. She’s holding it together.

And then the New Year’s party happens.

_ “What’s this?” Lin asked, holding up a grey and green envelope with gold embossed edges for Saikhan to see. She had been out of the office, helping coordinate a raid on a triad in District 4. It was her first day back in three days, and the envelope had been at the bottom of the very large stack on her desk. _

_ Saikhan looked up from his desk and took in the envelope in question. “New Years Eve Party. We all got ‘em. They’re holding it at the Kiyoshi Museum.” _

_ Lin immediately felt her heart kick into high gear as her mouth went suddenly, inexplicably dry. _

_ “You’re coming, right?” _

She can’t find a good enough excuse to not go.

_ She hated the place from the moment she stepped inside. She’d never been before, but the RCPD had spared no expense. Banners hung from the ceiling. There was an ice sculpture of the department logo. Tables of food lined the walls and at the end were the bars. Open, staffed, waiting. _

_ She hid a snarl and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her blazer. This wasn’t what the RCPD should be spending its money on. This event wasn’t for the beat cops, the heart and soul of the department—it was for the Chief, the ACs, and the Captains. She was fairly certain the Lieutenants were only invited because they held rank. _

_ There was no reason for them to be here, in this museum, wasting taxpayer money on food and booze. She wouldn’t have wanted to be here even if there wasn’t alcohol. _

_ If it wasn’t for the opportunity this event provided to talk with the Chief and the ACs, she wouldn’t have even come. But she knew her only way to the top, the legitimate top, would be to schmooze. To impress them with her work, with her mind, with her dedication. She’d make them see she was worth it, not just a last name to prop up in a figurehead position. _

_ She knew what she had to do, and that was being seen here, at this fucking extravagant and overindulgent party. But she didn’t have to like it. _

_ She skulked to one of the side tables, as far from the bars as she could possibly get herself. Saikhan and a couple of the other metalbenders found her there, essentially sulking and doing everything in her power to not look at people’s glasses. Spirits, she wanted a drink. _

_ “Didn’t think we’d see you here, Captain,” Lieutenant Rin said, sitting down two seats away with a loaded plate of the obnoxious sort of finger foods they served at these sort of events. His glass of beer made a hard thunk as he sat it down on the table and Lin watched as the amber liquid sloshed dangerously close to the lip. _

_ “Tenzin couldn’t steal you away for this one?” her other Lieutenant, Li, teased. He had a glass of sherry, and Lin could smell it. She didn’t even like sherry, but she wanted it. _

_ She crossed her arms stiffly. “He made me come.” _

_ “Sounds about right.” _

_ Saikhan dropped by the table then, setting his own plate of food down. “No drink, Chief?” _

_ She hesitated and looked away, unwilling to meet his eyes. “Line was too long.” _

_ “Ah.” A pause. “I’m about to jump in line, let me get yours. Baijiu, right?” _

_ “That won’t be—” but he was gone, disappeared into the milling crowd of officers. _

_ Fuck. _

_ “Hey, if the Avatar shows up, you’ll introduce us, right?” Li asked suddenly. “I heard he might be coming.” _

_ “Sure,” Lin said without thinking. She was trying to find Saikhan in the crowd by the bar but couldn’t. _

_ “Or Councilman Sokka!” Rin said excitedly. “I’ve always wanted to meet him. He seems approachable, you know? Like you could grab a beer with him.” _

_ Spirits, she was going to kill them. She could feel the anxiety mounting in her chest, in the tension heading quickly growing at the top of her spine. The craving for a drink was growing, and she only barely resisted the urge to jiggle her foot under the table. _

_ She knew she shouldn’t have come. It was too soon. She wasn’t ready. _

_ Saikhan materialized at her elbow like a shadow and set a glass in front of her. “Sorry for the wait. They had fen xiang, which I know you like better.” _

_ She looked at the glass like it was a bomb. Liquid temptation, set physically in front of her by her right hand. _

_ “Thanks,” she intoned tonelessly, but didn’t touch it. _

_ Saikhan sat down at the table where he’d set his plate earlier with a groan. “This place is packed. I didn’t even know we had this many officers.” _

_ Li and Rin engaged Saikhan in a bout of light small talk, talking about their wives and their kids and other nonsense Lin didn’t care about, even if she had been more mentally present. Instead, she stared at the glass of baijiu in front of her and wished it would disappear. She shifted, and the white jade tile Aang had given to for the six month anniversary of sobriety pressed against her thigh in the pocket of her slacks. _

_ “What’s wrong, Captain? Don’t like the fen xiang?” Rin asked, startling her back into reality. “I had some earlier before we found you, it was too good. You’d like it.” _

_ Couldn’t he leave well enough alone? _

_ She curled her toes in her dress shoes to quell the rage, because it wouldn’t do to lose her cool in such a public place for asking such an innocuous question. _

_ Did it count as breaking sobriety if you faked it? What about a single sip, to throw them off the scent? _

_ She reached for the glass like it was no big deal. The sweat from the chilled glass slicked her fingers, and it was all she could do to keep from shaking as all three of them watched her raise the glass to her lips. _

_ Just fake it. They won’t know. _

_ The glass was under her nose now, and she pressed her lips against the cool edge and tilted it back. The realization there was something wrong with the liquid in the glass didn’t hit her until the drink had sloshed against her skin and no sharp, piercing scent of hard liquor burned her nose or fruity smell of lingering fermentation assaulted her senses. _

_ This wasn’t baijiu. _

_ She looked down at the glass in surprise, then at Saikhan. He was looking at her impassively, arms over his chest, a look in his eye that might be construed as caring, or curious, depending on who knew him…and Lin knew him very well. They’d gone through the academy together, and risen through the ranks, him always one careful step behind her. _

_ “Well?” Li asked eagerly.  _

_ Lin looked at her Lieutenant, then at Saikhan, and then at the glass in her hand. She raised it back to her lips and took a hesitant sip. She expected flavor, a hit of earth or wheat, or the metallic edge some feng xiang had from the cloth sacks soaked in pig’s blood that the grain fermented in. _

_ But there was nothing. No bite, no tang. Just full, round, refreshing wetness. _

_ Saikhan had gotten her a glass of water. _

Oh fuck, _ she understood in an instant.  _ He knows.

_ “Is it good?” Rin asked from beside her. _

_ “It’s fine,” she said gruffly. She took a third sip, then knocked back the rest of the glass in an instant like she had been known to do in the before times. _

_ “That’s the spirit!” Li crowded, and Lin rolled her eyes. _

_ Rin stood from beside her and collected up the empty glass along with his own. “Want another? I’m going back.” _

_ “No,” Lin replied. “I should only have the one.” _

_ Rin shrugged and left the table, and she looked across the table at her first Lieutenant. _

_ Saikhan met her gaze and held it. _

_ There was nothing there that spelled judgment. There was nothing that suggested any ire, or deception, or anger. Just calm, cool, collected Saikhan, impassive and gruff as always, then man she’d trust with her life and already had—multiple times. _

_ She raised an eyebrow at him. _

_ He just raised an eyebrow back and nodded once, carefully, deliberately. Understood. _

He never mentioned it after, not a single word or question or turn of phrase out of line. But at every single event they attended together, he’d get her a drink, and it would always be a glass of water.

-/-

Aang dies two months after the third year anniversary of her sobriety. He slips quietly away one cool fall morning, his spirit disappearing amongst the fog that filled the bay, the complete antithesis of his explosive entrance back into the world some fifty-odd years before. 

Lin had been at work when the call had come in.

_ “Captain,” Saikhan said gruffly, coming into the training room that fateful morning. It had been a relatively calm week, as weeks went, and she had taken the break in cases and paperwork and scheduling to train with the new cable system. She had spent the last month perfecting the mechanism, and the last week or so tweaking the flight grooves in the arm pieces. _

_ Cuts and nicks littered her hands from all the failed attempts, but she was overall happy with the progress. It had been a years-long endeavor, keeping her up at night, giving her something to do with her hands that wasn’t painting or lusting after the bottle. And it was almost done. _

_ She didn’t notice her first Lieutenant at first. She was too focused on the form, on the execution of her steps and the metallic scraping of the cables as they exited and retracted. It was all looking good, feeling good, almost too good. Did she dare hope she was nearing completion? _

_ “Lin!” Saikhan said, louder this time, and she turned around, chest heaving from the exertion. _

_ “What?” she asked, annoyed, wiping a bead of sweat from her chin. _

_ “You’re needed on Air Temple Island,” he told her, and she could tell from the look in his eyes what had happened. _

_ It was all she could do to strip the prototype off her back fast enough. _

The months after Aang’s death were some of the toughest parts of her recovery. She had thrown herself into her work even more, channeling her grief and Tenzin’s into the completion of the armor prototype and its dissemination amongst a handful of her officers for field testing.

It was only a few months into the testing that Chief Kang called her into his office and told her because of her hard work on the new uniforms, and her exemplary running of metalbending division, that she would be being promoted to Assistant Chief in charge of Special Services.

Her days became full of mission briefings, logistic reports, and intelligence memos, folders of finance papers, personnel meetings, policy reports, all to be read and attended on top of her other duties. The Chief fast-tracked the new uniforms, and as the inventor, it was up to her to see their dissemination and training.

It’s good to be so busy. She doesn’t have to think about it, about the hole Aang’s death had left in her heart, in her life, in her support network. She just works herself to the bone until she gets home, cooks dinner, and collapses into bed.

Then she wakes up and does it all over again.

This goes on for six months, and then on the eve of her promotion, at probably the worst time humanly possible, Tenzin breaks up with her.

He does it in the training courtyard, lamely citing their growing differences and diverging career ambitions. (She knows, she’s pretty sure, it’s actually because she doesn’t want to have kids, and won’t give up her ladder climbing to settle down and raise a family.)

To say she doesn’t take it well is an understatement.

She might have flown off the handle.

She might have trashed Air Temple Island.

She might have arrested the prissy little air acolyte fangirl who had been hovering around Tenzin like a carrion bird for months.

She might have locked herself in the training room and pummeled the dummies into dust.

She might have collected all the gossip rags with the news splashed across them in giant letters and set them on fire, slowly, deliberately, then chucked the ashes off the docks in a fit of rage.

She might have slept under her desk for a week, because leaving the station was too painful and, more importantly, too much of a temptation.

She might have.

Maybe.

It was all a blur.

But she makes it through without picking up a bottle, and it’s that fact she clings to.

She doesn’t do it for herself. She does it for Aang.

Lin is sworn in as Assistant Chief in charge of Special Services on a blisteringly hot summer day, the sort where she almost regretted the change to metal uniforms because she and the other metalbenders baked in their suits as soon as they stepped outside.

From there it’s three hectic years of meetings and protecting candidates and late nights reading intelligence reports and planning convoys and protection details. She personally oversees the safety of more heads of state than she can count, and fends off assassins herself. Her secretary is useless, so she spends half of her day drafting the reports and answering the mail her secretary should be handling. She works long hours at the station—twelve, fifteen hour days, and sometimes doesn’t make it past the futons in the break room.

But it’s worth it. When Chief Kang announces his retirement, he names her his successor.

The press has a fucking field day. Lin sleeps in her office for two weeks to avoid the resulting media circus. It is two months of nonstop meetings, interviews, budgetary line items, on top of her Special Services duties and the fact she’s basically doing her secretary’s job for her.

Her days get even longer, and a bedroll moves its way under her desk.

Saikhan is brought up to take her spot, but interdepartmental politics has him swapped to Assistant Chief of Patrol and Personnel while an existing AC swaps into Special Services. This is good, because Lin wouldn’t have him in any other position.

When it’s clear Lin will do everything herself or die trying, an assistant is hired to take the burden off. She’s a quietly competent ex-United Forces firebender named Hui, a product of the United Republic with light brown skin, dark brown eyes, and short black hair styled carefully with hair wax that smells of citrus. Lin comes in to her first morning as chief to find a fresh pot of longjing waiting for her on her new desk, a leather-wrapped daytimer with her schedule inked carefully into the lines in crisp black letters, and her papers arranged in stacks of “immediately,” “before noon,” “today,” “this week,” and “future” with all the signatory points starred in heavy red marker.

Hui keeps all those without an appointment firmly out of Lin’s office, maintains an iron-clad hand on all her official RCPD correspondence, and provides an explanatory memo for each report that makes its way onto Lin’s desk.

For those facts alone, Lin takes an immediate liking to her. The fresh, expertly brewed tea every morning helps, too.

(The fact that Hui doesn’t appear to be afraid of her, no matter how nasty or ill-tempered Lin gets, is neither here nor there. Privately, Lin believes that’s exactly why Saikhan signed her letter of employment.)

It’s thirteen long, hard years as Chief, time marked by pai sho tiles left to her by Aang, sealed in envelopes, each labeled carefully with a name and a date. They’d been found in a bundle in some obscure corner in his desk, twenty square watercolor tiles with an accompanying pai sho piece each. The envelopes, all twenty of them, had been delivered to her by a council page. She’d sat at her desk for almost a full hour and stared at them when they’d arrived, then wrapped them in her coat and taken them home.

At some point, her backsplash becomes crowded, and she mounts the watercolors chronologically in a little book bound with tight seams. She buys a pai sho board and carefully lays the tiles out on her coffee table, an unbroken harmony that increases along the left side of the board with each sober year she passes. It remind sher, when she comes home with her folders of papers and budget reports.

Sokka’s death inspires her to root out the bloated corruption in the department. Before, as the new police Chief with a famous last name, she had to tread carefully, but seeing Sokka dead in the morgue galvanizes her. She personally fires sixteen crooked or otherwise underperforming cops and administrators, and Saikhan handles at least fifty others. The press isn’t sure what to do with her, and her public affairs officer despairs frequently, but Lin doesn’t care.

She makes the police force her own.

Her mother might have founded it, but it’s hers now.

She’s redesigned the uniforms, ousted the corruption that for many years defined it, and is finally respected for being  _ Lin _ , not being Beifong-comma-Lin.

It’s taken a hell of a lot of work, most of her sanity, and detoxing from a crippling addiction to alcohol to get there, but she finally has the Department where she wants it. She finally has  _ herself _ where she wants to be.

And then the new Avatar shows up in her city and everything goes to shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Without Linguini there wouldn't be Hui, or "Wrangling Chief Beifong and Other Extreme Sports," which are a series of oneshots I'll be posting about Lin and Hui (and Hui's wife Pimchan!) over the next few weeks. It's very West Wing, and much lighter than this. Hui will dip in and out of this fic, so if you'd really like to see her in action--that fanfic is the place to do it. Look for it in the next few days. :)
> 
> Next chapter is a doozy. We're about to dive headlong back into the angst, friends, so buckle up. 
> 
> As always, if you like what you read, please consider reading a review!


	5. Game 1: Rock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin "deals" (poorly) with the aftermath of having her bending taken away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whispers* I am so sorry.
> 
> CW: binge drinking, PTSD-induced nightmares/flashbacks

She stumbles home from the RCPD the morning after she loses her bending exhausted, in pain, and wrecked.

Tenzin and his family have most likely been captured.

Her bending is gone.

Her career is over.

Her sobriety is broken, and along with it, her promise to Aang.

She. Has. Failed.

She’s borderline delirious; her vision swims, her head aches, her ribs burn despite the healer’s touch, and her mind is fuzzy from the beer. Her tolerance, after eighteen and a half years, is shot. It’s all she can do to get inside. She somehow manages to put the key in the lock, open her apartment door, and in short order collapses in her bed fully clothed. 

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but she doesn't wake up again for sixteen and a half hours.

It’s a dreamless sleep, which is a minor blessing, but she doesn’t recognize it as such. When she wakes up and the slate floors of her apartment don’t sing under her feet as she stumbles into the bathroom, she realizes her past thirty-six waking hours were not, in fact, a bad dream.

She empties her mostly empty stomach into the toilet, retching miserably until she falls back against the clawfoot tub, spent. The metal makes a hollow noise at the introduction of her sudden weight, but it no longer feels like a second skin pressed against her back.

She pushes down another wave of nausea and sits there for a second, stunned, then forces herself to her feet. She’s usually comfortable walking barefoot in her own home, because the slate tiles respond minutely to her energy, giving gently under each footfall until she leaves them for the hardwood. She never realized how hard and cold they were until she no longer had bending.

She tries to cook, but can’t even enter her own kitchen without realizing how silent it all is. She’s trained for years to feel the slightest differences in metal. She can tell her different pots and pans apart with her eyes closed, from the way the bits of earth inside of them reach out to her. But suddenly that feeling is no longer there. They no longer speak to her. Her knives are silent, too, as is the metal of the icebox door and the grates of the stove.

She decides, despite the gnawing feeling in her stomach, that she’s not hungry.

Lin shoves her hands down the sleeves of her greatcoat and leaves her apartment desperate for something, _anything_ to distract herself, despite the pain her recently-broken ribs are causing her.

She hits the streets, but she can’t fucking _look_ at _anything_.

It taunts her, the streetcars and their cables, the sandstone veneers of the skyscrapers that glow in the late afternoon sun, the metal soles of her own fucking boots clinking against the cobblestones. The Satomobiles roll by, their gears grinding, mocking her. She never realized, truly, how much of this city was made of metal and stone until she could no longer feel it.

She goes to a hawker and buys a newspaper, and is sickened to see Tenzin’s photograph splashed above the fold. He’s missing, and so is his family. It sounds like the reports she’d overheard in the break room were true.

She wants to scream. She wants to cry. Instead she rips the paper apart and tosses it into a nearby puddle. She watches the ink bleed until the words are illegible but doesn’t feel any better.

“Chief Beifong?”

She whirls at the familiar voice, and is stunned to see her former assistant, Hui, standing down the sidewalk. She’s got her coat under her arm, her briefcase in hand. Hui looks as stunned to have run into her as she feels.

“Sorry,” Hui corrects when her former boss doesn’t respond, “It’s just Lin, now, I suppose? I apologize, old habits—”

“What are you doing?” Lin interrupts.

“I’m heading home from work,” Hui says slowly, holding up her briefcase, as if it were obvious.

Lin looks at the sky, sees how low the sun has dipped, and realizes with a start it must be past six. She’s been wandering the city for the better part of five hours.

When she looks back at Hui, the firebender is looking at Lin with some concern.

“Forgive me for asking,” Hui starts, “but are you—?”

“I’m fine,” Lin snaps, but she knows Hui doesn’t buy it.

“I heard Amon took your bending,” the younger woman says, as if uncertain.

Lin clenches her fists. She stuffs them into her pockets, trying to quell her fury because it’s not Hui’s fault. Although she would know the truth, because she probably read the intelligence reports and wrote the brief before giving them to Saikhan. So she does know, and she’s daring to ask for confirmation from the source like it’s Lin fucking job to tell the world that yes, the fucking monster that is terrorizing Republic City, _her Spirits-damned city_ , took her damn bending and she couldn’t do anything to stop him.

Maybe it _is_ Hui’s fault.

“Lin,” her former assistant says, taking one hesitant step closer, “would you like to come—”

“No,” she says coldly, and it’s a credit to Hui’s professionalism and her long exposure to Lin’s abrasive attitude that she doesn’t flinch. She tacks on a belated, “Thank you” because it feels like the thing she should do, even though she doesn’t mean a damn word.

She just wants to be alone.

“That’s fine,” the firebender says, but Lin knows her mannerisms well enough to know that’s what Hui says when it isn’t. “It was…good to run into you. I haven’t seen you since—”

She stops herself, but Lin knows. Hui hadn’t seen her since the day she tendered her resignation, the day Hui had hovered outside the double doors of her office, exchanging confused glances with Saikhan as the Assistant Chief of Support and Services had tried in vain to change her mind. That was the day Lin had packed her office into a box and given up her entire career so that she could save the metalbending officers she hadn’t been able to protect.

Some lot of good that had done. Now she doesn’t have bending either.

Lin presses her lips together and looks down the street, not wanting to think about the past that got her here.

“I need to get home,” Hui says gently. “Have a good night, Lin. Take care of yourself. And Lin—be careful.”

Now _that’s_ a loaded comment.

Lin scoffs.

Her former assistant hesitates, but when it’s clear Lin isn’t intent on speaking, she leaves. She goes off down the street, continuing off back to her life, her wife, and her happiness. Lin watches her go, and hates how she can’t read the earth’s vibrations to make absolutely sure Hui is doing what she says she is.

She waits until she’s certain Hui is gone, then continues on her aimless wander around the city. She feels like a stranger in her own body. Nothing is the way it should be, nothing feels or looks like it should. It even feels like it _sounds_ different, which is patently absurd, because earthbending has nothing to do with the auditory nerve…

But it does, clearly, because the world sounds hollow.

The city darkens around her and the street lights flick on. People skirt around her, almost running, desperate to get home. She realizes after the fourth or fifth one that they are scared. Of the Equalists, of what they might do to benders caught on the streets in the darkness of night.

She doesn’t have to worry about that anymore, she thinks with some deranged hilarity. There’s nothing Amon can do to her anymore that he hasn’t already.

If he caught her again, the only thing he could do is kill her. And, well, that would just be a blessing.

Her body feels weird.

She stumbles home, her body aching, only to be confronted by the pai sho board. Thirty tiles, all lovingly gifted by Aang, all carefully lined up in most of a harmony, stare at her from the coffee table.

She stands above it and stares back.

She feels sick.

The rage rises up again, and this time she doesn’t tamp it down. She turns and kicks the couch leg, hears something crack, doesn’t care.

Lin Beifong hasn’t cried, not seriously, since Sokka died. Since she cleared out his Republic City apartment and found the vintage bottle of sea prune wine with her name scrawled in faded ink on a label around the neck. The bottle she kept in her desk for years, throughout her entire sobriety, the one that sits in a box in her hall closet now, a gift never given. Some wild part of her wants to go open the bottle, now that’s she’s broken her sobriety, and drink to his memory in the way she couldn’t ten years ago.

But she doesn’t.

Instead she stares at the pai sho board for what feels like millennia, and a single tear trickles down her left cheek.

Then she goes to bed.

-/-

_She is back on Air Temple Island._

_She’s in the courtyard, kneeling, face thrust to the sky. Her hands are bound again, wrists chafing against the cord that ties her to an O-ring sunk deep into the ground._

_She struggles anyway. Her shoulder screams._

_She can’t cut the cord, can’t bend her way out of the O-ring, can’t move without dislocating something. There is no escape._

_The heavens open above her, and the rain falls heavy and cold onto her naked face._

_It clumps her hair, fills her mouth, her eyes, her ears. She chokes as the water slides down her throat. She closes her mouth, but it only enters through her nose. It feels like she’s drowning._

_She struggles again, tugging at her bindings, but there’s no saving herself. She coughs and spits, held fast as the water fills her lungs, crushes her chest, constricts her throat._

_What’s left of her breath bubbles out of her mouth, a silent, helpless plea._

_There is no hope. She is dying._

-/-

In the darkness of her apartment, Lin awakes with a gasp, chest heaving.

Usually she can hear the sounds of the city, but it’s silent tonight, just her and her ragged breathing. It feels like there’s a komodo-rhino on her chest; no matter what she does she can’t get enough oxygen into her lungs.

Her chest tightens, she gags, and it feels like the dream.

She rolls over and coughs violently, hacking spittle onto the wooden floor, trying to force in air.

Her body is all pain. She’s no stranger to it, but now her shoulders ache like she _was_ bound. She tries to shift, but her bad hip screams and forces her back into her prone position over the side of the bed. She’s wound tight, her heart hammering like she’s just launched herself out of a moving car or slid down a cable.

What in Agni’s name is happening to her?

She’s had bad dreams before, but nothing like this. She manages to get herself upright, out of bed, and hobbles to the kitchen for a glass of water. The slate is cool and unforgiving against her bare feet, but her lack of bending is the least of her problems.

Her hands shake as she fills the glass and it’s all she can do to drink it without gagging at the sensation of liquid running down her throat.

She can’t stop replaying the feeling of her lungs filling up with water. She leans heavily on the counter and massages her sternum as if to stave off the sensation, but it only reminds her of the bruises that had blossomed across her chest after the Equalists’ beatings.

She puts the water glass in the sink, still half-full, and hobbles to her couch. The leg she kicked the night before cracks ominously but the couch holds—for now. The little clock by the door says it’s just before five in the morning. She fiddles with the dials of her radio—something, anything, to fill the silence—and resolutely ignores the pai sho board on the coffee table by leaning back and closing her eyes.

She just needs to recalibrate herself. The smooth-jazz pumping from the one late-night radio station should do the trick.

She falls asleep.

-/-

_She wakes up in the darkness._

_Not the darkness of her apartment._

_Pitch black._

_No stars, no moon, no glow of signs from outside._

_Just nothingness._

_It’s also quiet._

_She’s never heard such stillness, not even when she and Aang had gone for weekend trips to paint or when she’d visited the Cave of the Two Lovers and spent the day underground. At least then there had been the sounds of the animals in the forest, the complaining of tiny grubs in the earth, the sound of water dripping gently to the ground._

_There’s nothing here._

_Just…empty._

_“Lin?” says Tenzin’s voice so close as if he’s right beside her, and she startles._

_“Tenzin?” she asks, and kicks her heel into the ground, but gets no response through her seismic sense._

_“Lin!”_

_His voice again, quieter, farther away._

_“Tenzin!”_

_“Lin!”_

_A different voice. Gruffer, gravellier, one she’d know anywhere._

_“Saikhan?”_

_“Lin!”_

_Hui._

_“Lin!”_

_Her AC of Support and Services._

_“Lin!”_

_Tenzin’s kids, in panicked chorus._

_“Lin!”_

_Korra._

_Her name, over and over again out of the darkness, each time farther and farther away._

“Hello, citizens of Republic City,” _says Amon’s voice suddenly, loudly, and she jolts awake._

-/-

She’s back in her apartment, drenched in sweat. It’s still dark, but the predawn is just starting to creep into the windows in her kitchen.

_“This is Amon.”_

His voice comes from the radio, and her blood runs cold. 

_“Good morning,”_ Amon says, like it’s some sick sort of morning broadcast. _“Yesterday, the Equalists dismantled the corrupt benders that lorded their power over nonbenders in this city, and tonight, we have taken the Republic City Police Department’s Headquarters. For too long,benders have used the guise of the law to dole out violence to the citizens. We have rid the world of Chief Beifong’s corruption and will be providing our own just protection to the citizens of Republic City.”_

No!

_“The Equalists now have control over the city. We shall begin to rid the city of bending. Soon Republic City will be a place for all—not just where benders flex their powers and hold themselves above us, their rightful leaders!”_

She can’t believe what she is hearing.

She tries to switch the channel, but Amon’s damned voice is on every one. She smashes a fist into the radio to quiet his deranged warblings, filling her hand up with splinters.

Her chest feels tight again, and her head is spinning.

Headquarters, she thinks wildly. _Saikhan._ She grabs her coat, barely remembers her shoes, and limps downstairs to the telephone. Thankfully there is nobody in line for the box, and she steps in and slams the door behind her.

_“Republic City Switchboard. How might I direct your call?”_

“Patch me through to Fishopatomus Courts,” she tells the operator. “District 10.”

_“One moment, please.”_

_“Fishopatomus Courts,”_ says a tired voice on the other end a few seconds later.

“This is Lin Beifong. Please connect me to Chief Saikhan, apartment 608.”

_“One moment, please.”_

The clock in the lobby ticks past the seconds.

Silence stretches on the other end of the line, and the pit of dread in her stomach tightens.

_“I’m sorry, ma’am, but neither he nor his wife were available to take your call. May I take a message?”_

She hangs up, and with shaking hands connects to the switchboard again.

_“Republic City Switchboard. How might I direct your call?”_

“Bunch Hornet Grove,” she says, “District 2.”

_“One moment, please.”_

The phone rings several times. _“Bunch Hornet Grove.”_

“I’m looking to speak with the Assistant to the Chief of Police,” Lin says, willing her voice not to shake, as she tries to remember Hui’s apartment number. “Apartment 305. Either her or her wife.”

_“One moment, please.”_

When the operator comes back minutes later and says neither Hui nor Pimchan can take her call, the pit in Lin’s stomach hardens.

She hangs up the phone in disgust and leaves the telephone cubby, pushes out into the street. Despite the early hour, the streets are bustling with people coming and going to their factory shift work, their dock jobs, their whatever jobs.

A truck drives by with a giant billboard of Amon’s face, and speakers blaring out the voice of the driver.

_“The revolution is upon us!”_

_“Nonbenders, resist!”_

_“Dismantle the facist bender occupation!”_

She stands rooted to the spot long after the truck passes.

Down the street, a hawker sets up for the day, newspapers tucked under his arm in preparation to sell.

“Avatar Korra missing!” he shouts to the group of citizens waiting for the street. “Avatar Korra abandons her duty to Republic City!”

Heads turn, and people rush over to buy a paper despite the streetcar making its way down the tracks to the station.

She watches the fray, and when it doesn’t die down, even after car after car passes by, she turns on her heel and walks down Senlin Avenue. To get away from the hawker’s reedy calls, she tells herself. To get away from the dreadful thought that Amon might have captured Korra, too.

She needs the world to be quiet. She needs to shut out Amon’s face, Amon’s voice, his message, but he’s everywhere and the city is falling and it is _her fault._ But no matter where she goes, she hears the truck, the hawker, Amon’s voice on the radio as she passes by homes and businesses with the windows open despite the winter chill.

She needs to forget it all.

She needs the safety, the quiet, that being drunk can provide.

Her resolve is weakening.

She’s already had the one drink, the night before, when the world had been too much and the station had been overbearing and the fear and the guilt and the shame had been all encompassing.

The beer had helped. It had taken the edge off, and she’d been able to sleep.

She’s already broken her sobriety.

What’s one more?

In a fit of desperation, she pushes into the first open grocery store she finds. 

-/-

She had forgotten how good the oblivion of alcohol was. The bottles of baijiu she has bought are shitty, but it doesn’t matter.

They get her soused, and that’s what counts.

The alcohol strips away the world, removing the pain and the hurt and replacing it with sweet, sweet oblivion. With a bottle of baijiu in her system, she can’t remember that Amon took her bending. She can’t feel the cold, lifeless earth under her feet.

She doesn’t have to feel. She doesn’t have to think.

She just has to drink.

-/-

She drinks a whole bottle of baijiu upon returning home, one glass at a time until her whole body hums and she can’t feel a thing, then promptly passes out.

When she wakes up, sicker than she’s ever been in her entire life, it feels like someone has stabbed her with an icepick. She blindly shoves willowbark tablets down her throat and, when the pain subsides just enough to be able to see, she stumbles into her kitchen for something to eat.

As she waits for water to heat to cook instant noodles, she hears something outside, like a voice, but loud and distorted. 

The trucks are back, this time out in the square outside her apartment. She can hear them from inside.

_“The revolution is upon us!”_

_“Nonbenders, resist!”_

_“Dismantle the facist bender occupation!”_

She forgoes the instant noodles and pours herself another shot.

And then another, when the first one doesn’t drown out the noise.

And another.

And another.

She drinks another bottle this way, then passes out again, this time on her couch.

Someone bangs on her door, but she ignores it. She’s not even sure if it was real, that knock.

It might have been, but it could have been a result of the dreams, because even with the alcohol the dreams come back, over and over and over again.

She drowns a thousand times and walks blindly through the darkness, listening to the voices of people she couldn’t save over and over and over again.

Each time she wakes up, thrust from unconsciousness by the sound of the propaganda trucks, or the sound of the streetcars, or explosions that rattle the city.

Each time it happens she drinks to numb the world, because what else can she do at this point?

She doesn’t have her bending, and she never trained to fight without it like nonbenders would. Her body is a wreck, still healing from having the shit kicked out of her. She’d only be a distraction, a liability, and Lin has had _enough_ of that, thank you very much.

Drinking means she can control the world around her this way, even if it’s just by drowning it out.

So she does.

She’s not sure how many days pass—could be two, could be twenty—as she hazes in and out of consciousness. Time is broken only by bottles of baijiu, migraines, trips to the bathroom to throw up, shots to take off the edge, hearing the damn city way too loudly through the closed shutters on her windows to be allowed, taking more shots to quiet the noise, and then repeating the process again and again.

It’s not like she has anywhere to be.

It’s not like she has anyone waiting for her.

It’s not like anybody cares about a Beifong without bending.

She is no longer of any use to her city. 

She has failed.

Although she hasn’t heard the trucks in some time, it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want to know.

She’s better off alone. 

She’s laying on her couch again, listless and drunk, when someone raps on the door.

“Lin!”

Oh, good. Tenzin’s voice has moved from her dreams into her waking hours.

“Lin, are you in there?”

She growls and reaches for her glass, although she’s not sure why she’s bothering with a fucking glass anymore. She knocks back the remnants of her drink and settles back against the arm, waiting for the alcohol to take her away.

And then the lock in her front door clicks open.

She bolts upright, but her head reels and her stomach lurches, and she barely manages to keep from throwing up.

“Lin are you in here—Spirits! Lin!”

Tenzin swims into her line of sight, all bald head, orange robes, and blue tattoos. He rushes to her side, and she can’t keep him in focus. He’s always been too damn tall, even when he’s kneeling beside the couch next to her.

“Spirits, what happened to you?” he asks, and touches her arm. She flinches. “Lin, you’re burning up! Are you okay?”

She levels him with the strongest glare she can muster (which, admittedly, isn’t that strong).

“Do I look,” she grounds out through gritted teeth, “okay?”

“We’ve been looking all over for you,” Tenzin says, and she feels his long fingers drop to her neck to check her pulse. “Where have you been?”

“I’ve been right here,” she says bitterly, sweeping a hand across her trashed apartment, “even since Amon dropped me on the steps on the RCPD.”

“Lin, that was weeks ago,” Tenzin said gently. “Well, two weeks—actually, a week and a half.”

Lin feels her lip curl, and she turns away from him. Her head is pounding.

“You need to see a healer.”

“I’ve already seen one,” she growls out. “They can’t do anything for me.”

Tenzin looks like he doesn’t buy it. He looks around, and scrounges up some of her last willowbark tablets. She hears the sink run in the kitchen, and then he’s back at her side.

“Take these.”

She hasn’t drunk water, actual water, in days. She’s too tired, and her head hurts too much, to argue. She lets him press the glass and tablets into her hand, and downs them. He takes the glass before she can leave a water ring on the wood of her table, then stands to return it to the sink.

She watches him go with an unsteady gaze.

“So,” she says gruffly. Her brain is finally processing he’s actually here, not in Equalist custody like all the trucks had screamed about for days. “You escaped then?”

“Yes. Korra saved us.” A pause. “Me, and Pema, and the children. Lin, we—”

“So you got yourself _captured,_ ” Lin spits, and she sees him wince. “The one time I needed you to be a fucking airbender and just _leave._ I _sacrificed myself,_ I _told you_ not to turn _back—_ ”

“You were captured!”

“You were to leave me behind!” she yells, and slams a fist into the side of the couch. It hurts, and that grounds her in her anger. “Why didn’t you listen?!”

 _Why did you make my sacrifice meaningless?_ she wants to ask, but doesn’t.

_Why did I give myself up if you were just going to squander the opportunity to escape?_

Tenzin is looking at her with pity, and she could kill him for it. He comes back in from the kitchen and settles on the floor beside her, like when they were kids. He looks as small as she feels.

“Saikhan said Amon took your bending,” Tenzin says softly. “ _Amon_ said he took your bending. Is it true?”

“What do you think?” she asks bitterly. She jerks her hand towards the metal in the kitchen, but nothing moves. Just like it hasn’t for the past week and a half.

She still can’t get used to it, and it feels like a stab in the heart every time.

She’ll never get used to the quiet.

Beside her Tenzin closes his eyes and sighs. His beard and robes rustle in the light breeze caused by a bit of unconscious airbending. 

So he still has his bending. Of course he does. 

Silence.

Wait. Tenzin had mentioned Saikhan. He had spoken to Saikhan. When had he—?

Fear suddenly shoots through her heart and she sits up urgently, despite the way it makes her head feel. “Did Saikhan—?”

“He’s alright.” Tenzin’s voice is gentle again. She hates it when he uses that tone. “He and most of the rest of the RCPD left Headquarters before the Equalists took it. Lin, you should be proud of them. Your officers took benders to safe houses and worked to get them out of the city.”

She swallows past a sudden lump in her throat.

“They’re not my officers anymore.”

She can see something pass over Tenzin’s face, can see the sorrow settle behind his grey eyes. She looks away so she doesn’t have to see it.

“Lin, there might still be hope,” he tells her. “Amon was a bloodbender.”

She glances back at him, startled. “Him, too?”

Tenzin nods. “We’re leaving for to the South Pole tomorrow to see Mom. Amon took Korra’s bending, but we’re hoping since it was just bloodbending, we think Mom can figure something out. She’s the best healer in the world, so if anybody can fix it, she can.”

Lin nods. Makes sense.

“We’ve been looking for you so you could come along,” he says hesitantly. “If she can heal Korra, maybe she could…?”

He trails off. It’s clear he doesn’t want to give her false hope, but she can’t help but feel something spark in her chest despite the cloud of alcohol obfuscating her mind. She glances back at him, looks around at the ruins of her apartment, and then settles back on his face.

She only has a single question.

“When does the boat leave?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whispers again* I'm so sorry
> 
> There's Kyalin next chapter tho?


	6. Game 1: White Lotus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin's journey to the South Pole to (hopefully) get her bending back. While she's there, she runs into and old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, my friends, at LONG LAST: Kya appears! Let the slowburn begin *in earnest.*
> 
> You might notice some chapter title changes. There will be two games, or acts, to this fanfic, and in each tiles will be played. :) Mostly me being a nerd. Can you catch the double meaning of the White Lotus tile?
> 
> As always my greatest thanks to Linguini, who is the best beta a butch could ask for.

It takes five days to get to the South Pole.

She takes the boat with Korra and her friends, because she absolutely does not want to spend three long days cramped into the back on Oogi’s saddle with Tenzin, Pema, and their children. It would be an absolute disaster, even if she didn’t throw an obnoxious child over the side within the first twenty-four hours.

Besides, the last time she rode on the back of Oogi with Tenzin and his family, it hadn’t ended well.

She spends the first day in her cabin horribly seasick, with a wicked hangover to boot. She hasn’t been this sick since the night she made Captain and her metalbending officers had bought her so many shots she had been drunk until well into the next morning. It’s much the same experience coming off a week-and-a-half of binge drinking.

She tries to tell herself the shivering is just from the cool winter air infiltrating her starboard side cabin and the nausea is just a part of her motion sickness, but there’s a small part of her that reminds her this was how detoxing back on Air Temple Island started.

As soon as she can stand without wanting to die, which takes most of the day, she goes down to the ship’s bar and buys a shot. It’s actually decent stuff, unlike the stuff she’s been drinking recently, and she appreciates the way it slides down her throat.

It’s gone too fast, so she orders another drink and sips at it slowly, enjoys the mouth-feel. The taste, the color in the glass. Spirits, she had missed this.

For the first time in days she lets herself enjoy the drink instead of feeling guilty about it.

Sure she had broken her sobriety, and she’d binged drunk for a solid week-and-a-half, but that was when it felt like the world was ending. When her whole life had shattered around her, ripped from under her like how Amon had ripped her bending from her very being.

She hates to admit it, but ever since Tenzin visited her and told her Amon’s little trick had been bloodbending, she has felt a sliver of hope blossom and settle in her chest.

If it was just bloodbending, there was no way Katara wouldn’t be able to figure out how to reverse the course. It might take some time, but she’d figure out a way, and Lin would be a master of earth and metal once more.

The hope buoys her, and for the first time in weeks she feels like she just wants to enjoy her drink instead of relying on it.

Maybe, just maybe, her life won’t end in  _ complete  _ shambles.

She’ll be fine. And when it is all over, she’ll stop drinking again and go back to work.

Lin finishes her second drink and sets it forcefully on the bar, and tells the bartender to put the two drinks on her cabin bill.

She isn’t really breaking her promise to Aang, because she’s not addicted anymore.

She is in control. She can stop whenever she wants to.

She stands up and goes to see about eating something, now that her stomach and head have finally decided to come to some sort of truce with the rest of her body. She’s missed dinner, but after a few polite (if stiff) inquiries, she is able to get a plate of leftovers which she takes back to her cabin to eat. Her first real meal in days.

She’s almost used to holding a plate and not feeling the ceramic hum against her skin like a living, breathing creature.

Almost.

But not quite.

.

.

.

The nightmares plague her on the boat, too.

She wakes up a little past midnight in a cold sweat, chest heaving and pulse racing.

She doesn’t know why they are still happening. Amon is gone and the Equalist movement in Republic City is in tatters, Tenzin told her so himself. And it’s not like Amon could do anything to her if he got his hands on her anyway; her bending is already gone, what else could he take from her?

This does little to calm her down though.

She sits up in bed and pushes her sweaty hair off her face. She rests a forearm on her knees and breathes shallowly, trying to regain control of her heat rate. She’s safe. She’s in the middle of the goddamn ocean, halfway to the South Pole.

So why the hell does she feel like this?

When she can’t get back to sleep, she gives up and slides on her shoes, her coat, and steps out of her cabin. She’ll need a drink to quiet her mind enough to sleep.

She passes quietly past the other cabins, the rubber soles of her boots quiet on the polished wood floor. When she reaches the middle deck, the bar is dark and the door locked, closed for the night.

Damn. She should have packed a bottle.

She’d thought about it, when she’d thrown her bag together the morning before, but she’d told herself she wouldn’t need it anymore.

She was wrong.

Lin turns and makes her way back outside, up onto the deck. It’s cold outside, but only winter cold, not South Pole cold. They won’t reach Whale Tail Island for at least another day, and after that it’s a two day wind through the straights of the Patola Mountains and out the other side.

She paces the length of the ship and ends up on the bow, where she leans against the railing with her hands in her pockets, staring out into the endless expanse of water surrounding them on all sides. Normally she wouldn’t be comfortable on the bow of a ship, so far above the water with nothing to catch her if she went over…but for the first time in her life, she can’t feel the absence of earth under her feet.

The breeze brushes her face, flutters her hair, and she looks up at the sky where the stars glitter against the inky blackness of the night like the world’s most beautiful painting.

She wonders, briefly, if this is what peace feels like.

“Lin,” says a voice, making her jump. She turns around and sees Korra making her way towards her. The young Avatar joins her in leaning on the rail. For some reason, Lin doesn’t mind the intrusion. “Can’t sleep, too?”

She doesn’t answer, just looks back out at the water, at the stars. The Avatar is dealing with enough of her own troubles, her own missing bending; she doesn’t need Lin’s worries, even if Lin was inclined to share.

“They’re pretty, right?” Korra asks. “The stars. We can’t see them like this in Republic City.”

“No,” Lin allows. “We can’t.”

“Why is that?”

“Light pollution.”

Korra makes a little noise in the back of her throat, like she wants to ask another question. Silence stretches between them, and they look out into the night together.

Lin has decided the young Avatar isn’t that bad, when it comes down to it. She’s impulsive and reckless, but with a fire-y drive and a thirst for justice. Korra reminds her of Su. Korra reminds her of herself.

“I’m sorry Amon took your bending,” Korra blurts suddenly.

She sighs. “Me too, kid.”

“I couldn’t—I didn’t—”

“It was my decision,” Lin says evenly, looking over at her. Korra is gazing at her seriously, more seriously than she’s ever seen her before. “There was no other option.”

“Do you regret it?”

Lin hesitates for a long time. 

“I wouldn’t have,” she says finally, “if Tenzin hadn’t suddenly decided my capture was the world’s best time to grow a spine.”

Korra bursts into shocked laughter beside her, and her mirth quirks the corner of Lin’s own mouth. Korra tucks her hands in her sleeves and hunches over the railing, resting her chin on her arms. “Does it make you feel weird?”

“Excuse me?”

“Does it feel like some part of you is missing?” Korra asks, looking over at her. “The world feels quiet, right? I can hear the water, but I can’t feel its tug. I can feel the warmth of flame but not hear it. The earth is…”

She trails off.

Lin closes her eyes and sighs again, resigned. “Yes.”

“Lin…” Korra hesitates, then straightens and looks at her. “What are you going to do if you can’t get your bending back?”

It’s a fair question. One Lin has no real answer to. She’s spent the last week and a half too drunk to even really consider the option, and now that they are on their way to Katara, she’s not planning on having to think about it unless absolutely necessary.

“You should get some sleep, kid,” is all she says instead, and she pulls away from the railing. “Good night.”

“G’night…”

Lin grunts, and returns to the comparative warmth of her cabin. She strips off her coat, her boots, and climbs into bed to try and take her own advice.

Sleep doesn’t come to her for many, many hours.

-/-

_ “I’ve tried everything in my power, but I cannot restore Korra’s bending.” _

Katara’s words feel like a knife to her chest. Lin has had almost a full day with the others in the waiting room of Katara’s healing hut, the chattering of the kids ratcheting up her already frayed nerves. With each passing hour, she’s gotten edgier and edgier, until it feels like her shoulders were a solid brick of tension.

She can feel her legs shaking as she stands, trying to comprehend Katara’s words.

“But you’re the best healer in the world,” she stutters, “you have to keep trying.”

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing else I can do,” Katara says, sadness in her blue eyes as she takes Lin’s desperation in. “Korra can still airbend, but her connection to the other elements has been severed.”

Korra comes and goes, but Lin barely notices it.

Katara can’t fix it.

Katara can’t undo Amon’s bloodbending.

Lin is never going to earthbend again.

Her hands flex uselessly at her sides as she tries valiantly to keep herself from choking on the way her throat suddenly closes.

She’s never going to be able to craft something from nothing, just by stomping her foot, again.

She’s never going to be able to pull up a wall and stop a Triad member in their tracks again.

She’s never going to be able to hook a cable and fly through the air, weightless, her stomach in her chest, ever again.

She’s shaking. Whether from fear or rage or exhaustion, she doesn’t know, but she can feel herself trembling.

Who is she?

Who is Lin Beifong, daughter of the greatest earthbender of all time, without earthbending?

Who is she, longest-serving Police Chief of the Republic City Police Department, without metalbending?

Who is she without the ability to move mountains, spool cables in an instant, and feel the earth sing as she walks barefoot across it?

“Lin,” Tenzin says gently, and his hand settles on her shoulder.

“Don’t,” she grinds out, swallowing thickly, and pulls herself from his touch. “Don’t you  _ dare. _ ”

“Lin—” Katara starts, but Lin is already moving, out the front door and into the bitter South Pole temperatures.

She doesn’t know where she’s going, doesn’t care. It’s freezing, and she didn’t grab her coat. Her body shakes for a whole different reason this time, and she ducks behind one of the hangers as a strong arctic gust cuts her to her core. She just stuffs her hands into her pockets and walks up to the ramp to the stone battlement, where she stands and looks out across the frigid landscape.

She feels the tear fall before she realizes she’s crying, and she buries her face in her hand, pinches the bridge of her nose, trying to keep the rest from coming.

“You’re going to freeze to death out here dressed like that.”

Lin startles at the sudden voice and spins around. Her eyes widen. “Kya.”

“Hi there,” Kya says sadly, and gestures at Lin’s clothes. “Planning on staying out here like that for long? We’ll have you in the healing hut for frostbite before you can say badgermole.”

Lin hasn’t seen Kya in ages. Not since she ran into her at a protest downtown, what must have been most of a decade ago at this point. What was gently greying hair then is now completely silver, and Kya’s got a few more wrinkles which line her kind face, making her look wise. The silver hair suits her far more than brown ever did. She’s even more beautiful than before.

Lin runs the tip of her tongue nervously over her lips and hopes Kya can’t see the fact she was crying. “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Kya says wryly. “A fact which many people, including my brothers, seem to have forgotten. Thanks for stopping by to say hello.”

“You didn’t exactly come join us in the healing hut.”

“You didn’t _ exactly  _ need more people in the waiting room,” Kya cuts back. She comes closer, and Lin sees that she’s carrying her coat. “I was actually coming down to see why nobody had bothered to update me on Korra’s progress when I saw you storm out.”

Lin presses her lips together and looks away. Kya sighs and comes closer, then drapes Lin’s coat over her shoulders. “Don’t be stupid next time. Frostbite can happen in fifteen minutes out here. Your ears are already bright red.”

“I’m not a kid anymore,” Lin scowls, and looks away. She just wants to be alone.

“Could have fooled me.” Kya reaches up and fixes the collar of Lin’s coat. “You look like you’re about to shiver to death.”

“I’m not exactly used to this weather,” Lin snaps.

“Then c’mon. We can go to my quarters, get you out of the cold.”

“I don’t—”

“I’m not leaving you to wander the arctic alone,” the waterbender says gently, “not when you’ve got news like this to process.”

“I—”

“It’s dangerous,” Kya stressed. “What if you fall in a crevice?”

Lin presses her lips together.

“Come up to my apartments. Nobody will think to look for you there.”

“Tenzin will freak.” Lin is ashamed of how shakey her voice sounds.

“Let him freak,” Kya says, and takes it as tacit permission to wrap her arm around Lin and push her towards the big building behind them.

Lin is so tired, so numb, that she lets her.

Kya deposits her into a pile of furs in the middle of the main room of her quarters, then goes to the attached kitchen. Lin hears her fussing around, the clank of a pot and clicking of spark rocks, the distant echo to Katara’s words playing over and over again in her mind. 

_ “I’ve tried everything in my power, but I cannot restore Korra’s bending.” _

She takes a deep breath, sighs, and cradles her head in her hand again. One hand rubs at her temple, and she can feel it. She can feel the shaking in her hands. She hasn’t had a drink all day.

What is she going to do? She’s never going to earthbend again. 

Then suddenly Kya is above her, holding two mugs.

“You aren’t going to take off your coat?” she asks, setting the mugs down on the low table in front of her.

Lin hadn’t even noticed it. She presses her lips together and doesn’t respond.

“Drink that,” Kya orders, “I’ll be right back.”

Before Lin can say anything, Kya is gone. She looks at the mug, a hand thrown clay number with a glaze that looks like it originated in the Fire Nation. The contents are still steaming. She’s not hungry, or even all that thirsty, despite not having eaten all day. However, she knows Kya will hover if she doesn’t. She’s like Katara in that way.

Lin doesn’t know why she’s even allowing it now; she’s never allowed it before.

Maybe she’s gotten too old.

Maybe she’s just too tired.

Maybe this reminds her of the time Aang forced her to stay on Air Temple Island and made her tea.

That memory is too painful, so she picks up the mug to distract herself. The clay is almost hot to the touch and infuses her cold hands with its warmth. If she had her bending, she thought bitterly, she would be able to feel the earth vibrating under her touch.

But she can’t, and she will never again.

(In retrospect, if she had known, she would have held every cup she’d ever drank out of a little tighter.)

That thought hurts, too.

All thoughts hurt.

She just wants to go to sleep, but knows Kya will kick her ass if she doesn’t drink the contents of the mug, and she’s too tired to argue with her tonight.

Exhausted, Lin sips cautiously at the contents and is surprised at what she finds. It’s broth, bone-based of some kind if she had to guess, warm and rich against her tongue. The fat cools and crackles against the edge and against her lips when she pulls away. She stirs it with a spoon and watches the granules of spice the broth is infused with swirl against the bottom.

Not at all what she was expecting.

Leave it to Kya to keep Lin guessing after all these years.

Kya breezes back in as she’s halfway through the mug, carrying two bottles.

“You’re actually drinking it,” Kya says, surprise clear in her tone. “I thought I’d have to force you.”

Lin glares at her weakly over the edge of her mug.

“Well, finish it,” Kya says impatiently, and drops the two bottles she is carrying on the table with a thunk. “Broth first, then booze. I got the good shit, too. Mom doesn’t think I know where she hides it, but I do, and she almost never drinks anymore.”

“Aren’t you too old to be stealing booze from your mother?”

Kya scoffs and shucks off her coat. She tosses it haphazardly on a stand by the door, then goes into the kitchen for two broth-free glasses. “On my healer salary? Please. Mom doesn’t like soju, and that’s a five hundred yuan bottle from some Fire Nation dignitary that visited five years ago. She won’t miss it. You, however, clearly need it.”

Lin looks at the two bottles of them; one is indeed, a very expensive bottle of the Fire Nation’s finest soju. The other one looks like its mulled seaweed cider, which isn’t her favorite but she’ll drink it if pressed.

It hits her as she stares at the bottles that Kya doesn’t know. Kya doesn’t know she’s an alcoholic, doesn’t know she has a problem. If she did, Kya would never have brought her alcohol like this.

She almost considers telling her, right there, because really…she’s already lost her bending. What else has she got left?

“I’m serious though, Lin,” floats Kya’s voice from the kitchen, breaking her from her thoughts. “Broth first, then booze. I’m not letting you drink on an empty stomach.”

“How considerate,” Lin mumbles into her mug, but doesn’t say anything else.

Kya comes over with the glasses and settles down at the table beside her. She cracks open the wax seal of the soju and pours Lin a glass. Under her appraising gaze, Lin drinks the rest of her broth and, as soon as her mug is empty, Kya switches it out for the soju.

Lin holds the glass tightly in her hand and stares at the contents for a long time. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Do what?” Kya asks as she reaches for her own mug of broth.

“Take care of me,” Lin says bitterly. “I’m not your patient.”

Kya looks over at her from the rim of her mug. “No, but I am your friend. And you’re having a shit time of it.”

Lin scowls.

“It’s what friends do, Lin,” Kya says gently, and bumps her with her shoulder. “And I think this is just a tad bit shittier of a situation than you breaking up with a boyfriend, so I’m here for you. I know you’d do the same for me.”

“I would?”

The waterbender rolls her eyes. “Yes, because despite all that gruff stoicism, you’re a good person. Emotional constipation notwithstanding.”

“Enough,” Lin grumbles, and tips back the glass of soju so she doesn’t have to listen to Kya talk anymore. It burns all the way down, and she coughs in surprise, eyes watering. “Agni, what the hell is this?”

“Did I mention it’s fire soju?” Kya asks, a mischievous glint in her blue eyes. “That’s the real reason Mom won’t drink it. You know she hates the stuff.”

“Really?” Lin asks her dryly. “An hour after I’ve learned I’ve lost my earthbending for good is when you decide to play a prank on me, Kya?”

“A little prank,” Kya says genially, bumping her shoulder, “but it made you feel something though, didn’t it?”

Lin sighs in resignation and leans back against the wall. You could take the fish out of water, but you could never take the trickster out of Kya. Kya takes the glass from her hands and fills it up with more soju, and Lin gamely sips. The drink burns, but in a good way. She brings up one leg and rests her elbow on it, staring off into the middle distance.

It really was gone forever, wasn’t it?

“So what are you going to do?” Kya asks.

Lin looks back over at her blankly. “What?”

“I  _ asked _ what are you going to do?” Kya asked seriously, taking a sip of her own mug of broth. “I know better than to ask you how you’re doing. The answer is shitty. But I am going to ask you what you’re going to do, because the Lin Beifong I’ve known for fifty years has been Type A since she was old enough to talk. She has always had contingency plans for all occasions.”

“You think I just happen to have a contingency plan for—” her voice breaks for a moment, and she clears it “—losing my bending?”

“No,” the waterbender allows, “but you clearly had a contingency plan for Tenzin and his kids. And if the way I hear it told through the grapevine is correct, you clearly had a contingency plan for getting your officers out of tight situations. So I know you’d have a contingency plan for losing your job as the Chief of Police.”

“It’s not about my  _ job, _ Kya.”

“No, it’s about your earthbending,” Kya says gently. “It’s about your control. About your identity.”

“I—”

“Take it from someone who has done this shit before—”

“—what, you’ve lost your bending before?” Lin snaps incredulously, because she can’t help it. There’s no way Kya understands the way she’s feeling right now, the sense of loss and loneliness and outright failure that has overwhelmed her from the second Amon took his thumb off her forehead.

“No,” Kya says, “but I’ve had my entire life upended and had to come out the other side, so I understand part of it.” Kya sets her mug on the table and turns to face Lin completely. “When Dad died and Mom moved back here, I put my entire life on hold. I went from camping on a Fire Nation caldera with my friends to helping my mom plan a massive ceremonial funeral in less than a week.”

Lin runs her tongue across her teeth and doesn’t say any anything. She’d been too busy comforting Tenzin and dealing with her own grief to worry much about Kya. Now she wonders if she should have.

“It felt like the end of the world,” Kya says softly, and reaches out to touch Lin’s knee. She doesn’t shrug off the contact, so Kya runs her thumb along Lin’s kneecap soothingly. “It all felt like it was gone—my friends, my family, my identity as a nomad…for the first few months I moved here, I was really lost.”

“You’re a waterbender,” Lin mumbles out, “it’s—it’s different—”

“That’s ostrichhorse shit and you know it,” said waterbender says sternly. “It doesn’t matter that I’m a waterbender and you are—were an earthbender. What matters is how we—as people, not as benders—react to the situations we find ourselves in. And I’m not saying you don’t need time to grieve the loss of your earthbending—what it means to you as a bender, as a spiritual identity, as a connection to your—”

“Kya,” Lin growls out in warning.

Kya tilts her head in acknowledgement, and Lin watches her long silver hair slip over her shoulder. “What I’m  _ saying _ is, it’s okay for you to feel like this. It’s okay to feel lost and like the world is over, and it’s going to take time. It’s only been three weeks.”

“I sense a but here.”

“The  _ but  _ is that while the Universe dealt you the shittiest hand it’s got and it fucking sucks, I know you, Lin. You’re more than your earthbending and you always have been. You’ll get through this.”

Lin gives her a droll look.

“I’m serious!” Kya shoves her a little, and it’s all Lin can do to keep from spilling her soju. “You always painted with Dad when you visited the island, no matter how late it got or what you had to do in the morning. You always helped Mom with the dishes after dinner, and Su with her homework even after you two fought like demented badgermoles. I don’t think there’s a speech Tenzin wrote for the first few years that you didn’t run him through until he could say it in his sleep. And you whipped Bumi into shape for his United Forces physical.”

“…with earthbending.”

“On a course you designed entirely by yourself,” the older woman reminds her. “Bumi complained that you were the devil for weeks.”

Lin sighs and empties the rest of her drink before Kya shoves her again and she really  _ does  _ spill it. She can feel the effects of the first glass seeping through her body, making her extremities warm and the parts that hated herself quiet. Well, a little quiet. She’s going to need more alcohol before that part shuts up entirely.

“Regardless,” Kya says softly, and she squeezes her knee. “I’m confident that whatever you choose to do with yourself after your recovery, you’ll be good at it. That’s the kind of person you are.”

“I don’t want to talk about this right now,” Lin grumbles out, and sits up to fill her glass from the soju bottle. Kya sighs beside her and Lin can’t help but feel like she’s disappointed her. Seems like it’s a trend in her life, disappointing Aang and his family. She runs a hand across her face and leans back again, resigned to being a failure and a disappointment for the foreseeable future.

She’s just taken her first sip when the door bursts open. Kya jumps to her feet, water bent into her hands out of Spirits knows where, but it’s only Korra.

“Lin!” The Avatar practically bursts past Kya to get to the former earthbender. “Lin I know how to restore your bending!”

Lin's head snaps up to look at her in shock. “What?”

“We just have to go to the Southern Avatar Temple!” Korra says excitedly. “Aang showed me!”

“You saw Dad?” Kya asks, also excited, but for entirely different reasons. “Korra that’s—”

“No time,” Korra says, and then she’s grabbing Lin by the wrists and hauling to her feet. The remaining soju in Lin’s glass sloshes everywhere, but Kya catches it with her bending before it hits the ground.

“Great, you’re already wearing your coat—let’s go!”

“Korra—what—”

“I saw him,” Korra says, her smile like a million watt bulb. “’When we hit our lowest point, we are open to the greatest change,’ that’s what he said! Now c’mon, don’t you want to be an earthbender again or not?”

Lin blinks dumbly, and then she nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got to explore some good stuff in this chapter, and it's one of my favorites that I've written so far. Lin & Korra's relationship because they both lost their bending, some Kya doing what she does best, and setting up some Kya character development for when she realizes she gave Lin, an alcoholic, alcohol. Also an in joke that you'll see it again in Ch 11. ;)
> 
> If you like what you read, I always love to read your reviews!


	7. Game 1: White Lily

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katara reveals some new information, Tenzin asks for advice, and Lin returns to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember way back when, when I said in my A/N that Katara helped Lin during her first detox? That comes in here. ;)
> 
> As always, thank you to Linguini for her awesome beta powers! <3

That night the South Pole is jubilant. After Korra returns Lin’s bending, Tenzin flies to Harbor City and back on Oogi for extra food, and they have themselves a party. The sun doesn’t set at this time of year, so Lin isn’t sure exactly what time the festivities end, but they all pack into Katara’s hut until the small hours. The kids run around, squealing with delight and excitement, with Bolin and Korra playing surrogate older siblings and chasing them around to wear them out. Mako helps Katara, Kya, and Pema in the kitchen with the food, and Lin just tries to stay out of the way.

They eat in a giant ring around the hearth as one big family, and afterwards the kids get right back to it. Korra and her friends cluster up, jostling around about something, and even the adults get into it. Tenzin, Kya, Pema, and Korra’s parents sit with Katara, swapping stories about their childhoods and Korra’s and generally just enjoying the first night, the first real night, they’ve all had without stress in months.

For her part, Lin spends hours sitting alone in a corner, levitating pebbles in her fingers. She twists them around and around and around, marveling at the way they respond. The armor she has worn almost her entire life once again feels like a second skin, and the cables on her back hum and press to her earthbending, to her.

It’s almost too much, after so many weeks away. 

The cables are too loud, the ground too sensitive, the rocks too ready to jump to do her bidding.

She’s also probably, slightly, a little bit drunk, which doesn’t help. Being drunk has always made her bending worse, sloppy, with double vision in her seismic sense to the point where the signals cross in her brain and she gets a migraine.

So she shucks the armor, because the cables are _ so damn loud _ , and slips on a sweater she borrows from Kya and thick socks to deaden her feet. It doesn’t do much, but it keeps the sound of the kids and the chatter from the kitchen and Bolin’s excited yelling from completely overwhelming her already over-sensitized body and mind.

She sits in the corner and slowly rotates her pebbles, and marvels. 

At some point in the night, Katara appears at her elbow and presses a mug into her free hand. Lin lets the pebbles drop and takes it without complaint.

“How are you feeling, Lin?”

“I’m fine,” she says, even though she’s not, because it seems like the thing she should say.

Katara looks at her, and it feels like Lin is a teenager and back on Air Temple Island. “Drink your tea.”

Lin wrinkles her nose at Katara’s hovering, but takes a sip—and immediately regrets it. The tea tastes like the meat market smells, with a horrible musky, salty aftertaste that reminds her of rotten seaweed mixed with black tea. It’s a taste she’d know anywhere, because it’s burned into her taste buds from the week she spent detoxing on Air Temple Island.

Dread creeps over her and she tears her gaze away from the mug to look at Katara, horrified.

Katara smiles softly, apologetically, and settles beside her on a block of ice she bends up from the floor. “I thought so. How much have you had to drink tonight?”

“Not…much.”

“And in the past week?”

Lin presses her lips together and doesn’t respond.

“When did you break sobriety?” Katara asks her, her tone neutral. 

Lin’s hands are shaking. She clutches the mug of awful detox tea. “Aang told you.”

“He did,” Katara allows quietly, not moving from beside her. To anyone else in the room, it would look like they were just catching up, an old woman and her adopted niece.

“He told me he wouldn’t tell you,” Lin grinds out, and she realizes the shaking in her hands is anger, not fear. Aang had betrayed her.

“He only told me what was going on after your seizure,” the waterbender says gently. “He was afraid, and for a while I was, too.”

Lin suddenly remembers the feminine voice calling her name, the cool hand cupping her face, the way her tiny room glowed as it had spun from her vertigo. Her grip tightens further on the mug in her hand and it shatters, immediately scalding her hands with boiling water and embedding tiny shards of ceramic into her palms. The pain is sudden, sharp, and intense.

“Fuck!”

Everyone in the room turns at her outburst, and the entire hut stills. Lin wants to die of humiliation.

Kya is there in an instant, kneeling on the ground with a worried expression knitting her eyebrows together. “Lin! Are you okay?”

“I’ve got it,” Katara murmurs to her daughter, bending the water out of the spilled tea and immediately covering Lin’s hands in it. It starts to glow, and the pain ebbs. “She’s just getting used to her bending again.”

Kya hesitates there, uncertain, her hand on Lin’s knee.

“Oh for Spirits sake, Kya,” Lin all but spits, and Kya backs off with a soft apology. 

The rest of the hut slowly goes about its business. Katara uses the water to carefully pick the shards of ceramic out of Lin’s skin, then heals over the cuts until nothing is there but red lines. Lin knows from experience those will be gone in the morning.

“Thanks.”

Katara gives her a soft smile. They sit in silence, watching the kids. Lin’s mind is racing; she doesn’t remember having a seizure during her detox, and Aang never told her about it. He never told her Katara had known either, had healed her, had eased the suffering she so deserved.

It makes her nauseous to think about.

“How many did I have?” 

Katara looks over at her. “Hm?”

“Seizures.” Lin turns and looks at her, her voice on the edge of shaking. “How many did I have?”

“Just the one,” the waterbender replies. “Mostly you hallucinated and vomited. I only got involved twice; once after the seizure, and once after you started bending while you hallucinated.”

“…I see.”

Lin is quiet. She wonders how much else Aang didn’t tell her.

“You didn’t answer my question, Lin,” Katara says quietly, firmly. “When did you break sobriety?” 

“It was a moment of weakness.” Lin lies. Well, it isn’t technically a lie. It had been a moment of weakness… just three weeks of weakness. But it’s fine now. _ She  _ is fine now. “I’ve got my bending back. It won’t happen again.”

“Do you go to meetings in the city?”

“Yes,” she lies again. She doesn’t, not anymore. She’d tried several times after Aang had died, and then again after Tenzin had broken up with her, but they hadn’t been for her. She’d hated being among strangers, hated that she’d been expected to lay her feelings bare. She hated admitting she was an alcoholic.

Katara leans forward and places her hand on her knee, where Kya’s had been. It doesn’t feel nearly as comforting. “Go when you get back.”

Lin nods once, sharply. 

“I mean it, Lin.”

“I will.” Another lie. 

“Good,” Katara says, and stands slowly. “I’ll pack some tea blend for you, but you’ll need to find an apothecary once you’re back in Republic City. If Moons is still open, they had the best mix years ago. That’s where Aang bought yours.”

Lin knows for a fact Moons is still there, because she saw it when she wandered the city aimlessly the day after she’d lost her bending. She nods. She just wants this conversation to be over.

Katara gives her a hug, then goes off into the kitchen. Much to her chagrin, her seat is almost immediately filled by Tenzin.

“Are you alright?”

“I didn’t like that question a week ago, what makes you think I’ll like it now?” she growls.

Tenzin tries again. “How are you feeling?”

Lin glares at him. 

Tenzin sighs. “I’m just worried about you, Lin.”

“Nothing to be worried about,” she tells him gruffly, and stands, dusting imaginary dirt off her palms (and regretting it). “I’m fine.”

“You just broke a mug!”

“I’m just getting used to bending again,” she says, borrowing the excuse Katara had given. She’s not actually sure if she had involuntarily bent the ceramic in her anger, but she’ll take the cover. 

Tenzin doesn’t look convinced, but seems to decide discretion is the better part of valor. “Can we go for a walk? I have something I want to discuss with you.”

“About my bending?” Lin asks testily.

“No, about the police force.”

Lin pauses in surprise, then nods and goes to get her great coat. She pulls on her gloves, and she and Tenzin push out into the night. Well, as night as the South Pole could get at this time of year. The sun is low on the horizon, casting the compound into semi-twilight, but Lin knew it would dip no lower and get no darker. 

They walk away from Katara’s hut, towards the massive gates that keep the compound enclosed. Tenzin has his hands tucked into his robes and he’s looking pensive.

“Lin,” he says gravely, “how much did you follow of Saikhan’s leadership after you resigned?”

“Every minute.”

He nods, like he expected her to say that. “Korra told me how he ordered the arrest of nonviolent nonbenders after claiming they were Equalists. He was obstinate with me and—”

“I’m well aware of Saikhan’s shortcomings as Chief,” Lin snaps defensively, then winces. It came out worse than she intended, and Tenzin didn’t deserve her ire with her former right hand. She sighs. “I thought he was ready.”

“You left very suddenly,” he says softly. 

“I did, but it’s no excuse.” 

Tenzin nods. They continue to walk, and Lin burrows deeper into her jacket as the arctic chill seeps into her bones. Kya was right, she really wasn’t meant for this weather. Suddenly, the air around her warms, and she looks over to see Tenzin completing a small form. He’s heated the air for her, obviously noticing her discomfort. 

“Thanks,” she says gratefully, allowing a small smile to tug up the corner of her mouth.

He smiles back.

“I have plans to introduce a motion to reinstate you as Chief of Police,” he tells her as they continue to walk, “As soon as we can find the rest of the council and restore their bending, that is.”

“Is that wise?” 

Tenzin looks over at her, shocked. “Of course we need to reinstate the council.”

“I’m talking about me,” she says dryly, then adds, “but the council is questionable, too.”

“You know the city better than anyone,” he argues immediately, “and it will need your leadership in this time!”

“Tenzin, two weeks ago the city cheered after Amon took my bending.”

“That was Equalist propaganda and you know it.”

She presses her lips together. “What if they were right?”

“Excuse me?”

“About me.” She pauses. “I’ve had… a lot of time to think recently.”

Well, she’s had a lot of time to think in the past week, on the boat, not while she was blackout drunk in her apartment. But Tenzin doesn’t need to know that. 

Tenzin looks at her aghast. “This isn’t time for your self-deprecation, Lin!”

“Listen to me for once, airhead.” Lin gives him a stern look. “You wanted my counsel, so you’ll get it.”

Tenzin stares a moment longer, then sighs, his airbending ruffling them both with the force of his frustration. “What?”

“Consider for a moment that Amon was correct. Not with the nonbender superiority bullshit. The inequality. Saikhan showed bender aggression and bias against nonbenders in Dragon Flats. Benders get better jobs, oftentimes less dangerous one, too. Have you been to some of the factories that hire primarily nonbender workers?”

“No…”

“You should,” Lin tells him. “Schedule a visit, see for yourself. Additionally, who occupies the highest ranks at the Republic City Police Department?”

“Metalbenders,” Tenzin says slowly. “But that’s because—”

“Of the bender bias that my mother showed as an earthbender, and as a metalbender,” Lin informs him, “a bias I unconsciously continued.”

“But you grew up with Bumi! Uncle Sokka and Suki trained us along with him. You can’t possibly—” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Lin snaps, growing impatient. “Tenzin, we grew up as benders, and you know Bumi always felt like he struggled to keep up.”

“But—”

“Spirits, Tenzin, listen to me.” She is irritated now, perhaps irrationally so, but Tenzin had always been one for dogma. He had always gotten stuck in his little boxes, ever since he was a kid, which for a supposed free-thinking spiritual guru was almost comical if it wasn’t so sad. “Stop thinking like an airbender for once, or actually start, Agni. If my time without bending has taught me anything, it’s that nonbenders have gotten a raw deal.” 

Lin pulls out the pebbles in her pocket and twists them around in her gloved fingers, not bending them, just feeling them, hard little nubs of rock in her hands. “Amon went about it incorrectly, but the Equalists had a point. We might quell the violence for now, but if we continue on as normal it’ll just come back, rise up again, and we’ll be right where we started.”

Tenzin grew quiet. They complete their circumnavigation of the compound and start on a second loop.

Finally, 

“So what are you suggesting?”

“I don’t know,” Lin says honestly, which hurts a bit to say. “But part of that change will have to come with the Republic City Police Department, and with the council. Most of my—the force is benders, and there hasn’t been a nonbender on the council since Uncle Sokka stepped down.”

“So you want Saikhan to stay?”

“Not necessarily.”

Tenzin huffs, and another gust of air ruffles them both. “I see.”

“We’ll see what happens when we return to Republic City.”

“Yes,” he says with a sign, “I suppose we shall.” 

They start back to Katara’s hut, walking in companionable silence. Lin had missed this. Verbally sparring with Tenzin, talking policy and laws for hours, getting frustrated over his many shortcomings.

Just being friends with him.

“Lin,” he says suddenly, just outside the door, and stops to put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s good to see you fired up about something again. When I found you in your apartment, I…”

He trails off, and Lin’s stomach clenches.

She knows what it had looked like. What it had been.

“You’re seriously alright?” Tenzin asks, sincerely. “It’s okay to not be.”

“You know me, Tenzin,” Lin grumbles, and turns away from him to push through the door so she doesn’t have to see the concern in his grey eyes. “I’m always fine.”

-/- 

The return to Republic City is chaotic, to say the least.

The media circus upon their return is absolutely ridiculous. Tenzin meets them on the boat before they disembark and Lin hides in her cabin and lets Korra handle the press.

She watches Korra out her porthole window, and Lin remembers Korra’s first press conference. The kid has grown so much since Lin first found her cuffed in Interrogation One, and Lin is almost proud.

“Lin.” 

Her head snaps up, and to her shock, Saikhan is standing in the bulkhead of her cabin. He’s in his metalbending uniform; he’s probably been at the event in an official capacity. She stands up from the bed and gives him a curt nod. “Chief.”

She watches him look her up and down, although what he’s looking for is unclear.

“Is it true?” he finally asks her. “You have your bending back?”

“Yes,” she says slowly, glancing at her trashcan to make sure the bottle of soju she had taken from Kya was hidden. She’d had a nightmare or two on the return journey and it had gotten her to sleep. She has no plans to continue now that she was home, and she doesn’t want Saikhan to worry.

“Good,” Saikhan says, and with a single movement he tears the Chief badge off his chest and all but throws it at her. “This belongs to you.”

“Saikhan—”

“I have no idea how you’ve done this job for so long,” he tells her, a hint of desperation in his tone. “Even with Hui, it’s hell. I hate it.”

Lin stares at him, unsure where this is coming from. She had always planned for Saikhan to succeed her, she thought he’d been ready when she tendered her resignation. He clearly hadn’t been, which had been partially her fault. “If this is a matter of training—”

“I don’t give a damn about the training, Lin,” Saikhan growls. “The politics, the council, the Avatar—all of it. It’s awful. I’m a beat cop with delusions of grandeur and you know it.”

She closes her fist around the gold badge, the one she had been so desperate to wear for so many years. To impress her mother, to prove to herself what she could do, to prove to the world in some twisted way that she wasn’t just her mother’s daughter.

“Please come back,” he begs. “We need you.”

Lin feels the anger she had felt earlier when she’d heard of Saikhan’s fumbling from the radio. “You need  _ me _ ? I gave you my  _ department, _ Saikhan!”

“Technically,” he almost yells back, “you thrust the department into my under-qualified hands in the middle of a terrorist coup, then went off to conduct vigilante justice by yourself. Thanks, by the way, for breaking those kids out of jail, that was really great for me to deal with on my first day.”

“Don’t get cute with me, Saikhan,” she tells him, even though secretly she agrees with him.

“Tenzin yelled at me.  _ Tenzin.” _

“You probably deserved it,” she says dryly.

He makes a face. 

She rubs her thumb over the badge in her hand, feeling the pitting of the badge, the damage it had taken in the short time Saikhan had taken over the mantle, and sighs. “If I come back, I’m doing a complete overhaul.”

“Of course.”

“I’m serious. You fucked up.”

“I know,” he says softly. 

“You’re going to remedial training. Basic cop school, since you’ve apparently forgotten it.”

“Alright,” he says without argument.

“I trained you to have more backbone.”

Saikhan sighs. 

“I’m not you. Nobody is you, Chief. You left a big hole.”

Lin presses her lips together and tucks the badge into her pocket, then looks out the window. The press conference has ended, and most of the media have dispersed. “We have to do it properly.”

“Tenzin has been working on the council since he arrived. We found the other members while you were away.”

Of course he had.

She stoops and grabs her bag off the ground, slinging it over her shoulder. “Let’s go to work, Saikhan.”

He nods, and falls into step behind her on her way out the door. 

-/-

It’s another week before she can go back to work, formally, but it doesn’t take her long to fill her schedule anyway.

She cleans up her apartment, throwing away the bottles and the trash, and resolutely ignores the pai sho board on her coffee table. 

She leans over maps at the station, helping Saikhan locate the Equalist bases she remembers.

She sits in meetings with Korra and Tenzin about the future of the council.

She stands guard over the crowds as benders come to have the Avatar restore their bending.

The week flies by.

On Monday, she steps into the station with her box of supplies, untouched from the stint in her hall closet. Hui is waiting for her with a pot of tea and her morning paperwork, the same as always.

“Welcome back, Chief,” her assistant says as she sets the box down on the floor by her desk.

“Hui,” Lin acknowledges as she sits down heavily in her chair. She hadn’t slept well the night before, more her racing thoughts than nightmares (for once), and she gratefully accepts the cup of tea Hui passes her.

“I made the calls you requested,” Hui says, passing over Lin’s leather planner as well. “I have several leaders for nonbender equality lined up across your schedule this week.”

“Good.” Lin pulls the planner forward and looks at the week. It doesn’t look too bad, all things considered. Hui must have scheduled her lightly. Lin is certain it won’t stay that way for long. 

She flips to her day and looks at the list of calls and meetings, inked on the lines in neat black ink, the same as always. Her first meeting is at nine, with the soon-disbanding council, to discuss the RCPD’s role in the securing of elections for the transitioning Republic. She runs a finger over her lips and considers it, mentally preparing herself for the stress it will bring.

Hui hesitates in front of her desk. “Chief?”

“Yes?” she asks, without looking up.

“Don’t ever resign without giving me two weeks notice to find a new job again.”

Lin looks up, startled, and sees Hui’s dark eyes devoid of her usual dry, sparkling humor. She frowns. “I thought you liked this position?”

“I do.” Hui pauses. “When you’re Chief.” Another pause. “With all due respect, Chief, Assistant Chief Saikhan wasn’t ready.”

“I’m aware.”

“He got overwhelmed.”

“I know.”

“He was laughably bad.”

“I  _ know, _ Hui.” Her tone shifts into dangerous territory, and Hui nods once in acknowledgement of her overstep.

“Two weeks’ warning, Chief, is all I’m asking next time,” she says, and taps Lin’s first stack of paperwork for the day to indicate where she should begin. “A month, if you’re feeling generous.”

Lin huffs and rolls her eyes. “Alright, alright.”

“Thank you.”

The relief in her assistant’s voice is genuine, and for a second Lin feels a crushing sense of guilt. She had left the Department to flounder in her absence, and it hadn’t just affected Saikhan. It had affected them all. 

“Your first meeting is at nine, Chief,” Hui tells her, just slightly stiffer than normal, and then sees herself out.

Lin stares after her until the door between their offices closes with a pointed click. She shakes her head, trying to evict the cobwebs from her brain, and pulls on her reading glasses as she picks up the pile marked ‘immediately’ and starts to read. There’s an hour until her first meeting back as Chief, and she plans to make it count.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last non-angsty chapter for.... *laughs nervously* some time. *grimaces*
> 
> If you liked it, let me know? I love reading your comments and hearing your thoughts :)


	8. Game 1: Rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin's spiral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternative summary: Part 1/2 of me trying to explain why Lin is so OOC in Season 2. The answer? PTSD and alcoholism.
> 
> This is, I think, one of my favorite chapters (so far!) in the entirety of BSG.
> 
> Content warning: Along with the alcoholism, and the resulting binge drinking, this chapter contains Lin having a very vivid flashback and panic attack. It's the last section, and will be pretty obvious when you get to it. 
> 
> (Thank you, as always, to Linguini for her awesome beta skills.)

She thought it would be easy to come back to work, to slot right back into her position as Chief and work as if nothing had happened, but it’s not.

So much is wrong with the department, with  _ her _ , and her schedule fills up with phone calls and paperwork for the new task force and meetings with her new consultants, along with planning new curriculum for the academy, for remedial academies, as well as the other many, varied, and often  _ pointless _ meetings she must attend about the future of the Republic that often end in shouting from those around her and with little overall progress besides the raising her blood pressure.

And then there’s the brain fog.

She can’t get rid of it, no matter how much she sleeps or how much she trains or how much tea or water or yes,  _ alcohol, _ she drinks.

It won’t leave her.

It clouds her judgment, makes her tired and even more irritable than normal. And that’s before the hangovers.

She hasn’t stopped drinking. She can’t get the stress to go any other way, can’t find a way to unkink the tension in her shoulders or slow her racing thoughts enough that she can actually drop off. Sometimes it only takes one drink, sometimes more.

She can tell Hui and Saikhan are watching her, trying to figure out what’s wrong, why she’s  _ off _ , so after two weeks she gives them an assignment to get them off her trail.

“The firebender who worked with the Avatar,” she says to them as she looks over an intelligence briefing before a meeting with Special Services. “I want him on the force.”

“Mako?” Saikhan supplies.

“Yes.”

“The probender?” Hui asks, confused.

“The same,” Lin says, and closes her folder. “He’s got a good head on his shoulders, he’s a skilled fighter, and he’s quick on the uptake. His brother I could take or leave, but Mako’s good. Get him in the academy.”

“The one that starts tomorrow?” Saikhan clarifies, obviously aghast.

“Is it that time of the year already?”

“I’ll make the call to Air Temple Island,” Hui says immediately, but Lin doesn’t miss the exasperated look she shoots Saikhan before she turns on her heel with military precision and heads for her office.

“I want weekly reports on his progress,” Lin tells Saikhan. “The new kind of recruits we want on the force? He’s it.”

“I’ll see it’s done,” he tells her stiffly, and he leaves, too.

Good. That will keep them busy for a while.

-/-

Tenzin steps into her office a month after she’s back, as usual at the worst time possible.

“Can this wait, Tenzin?” she asks as she’s packing paperwork into her briefcase. “I’m late for inspection at the academy.”

“ _ Your _ assistant let me in here.”

Lin looks through the window into Hui’s office just in time to see her step out, no doubt to make herself scarce. She sucks on her teeth and turns back to look at Tenzin. “What?”

“The wreckage of a boat matching the description of the one Amon and Tarrlock used in their escape washed up on the shores of Shu Jing this morning,” Tenzin tells her, and she feels her blood run cold.

“What?” she asks, because that’s all she can manage. Suddenly her heart is in her throat, and her chest feels right. 

“It’s early, but it looks like there was some sort of explosion.”

She leans heavily against her desk, staring down at her desk calendar in an attempt to center herself. “Where there bodies?”

“The wreckage was badly mangled,” Tenzin hedges, which from Lin’s extensive experience means no. “I thought you’d like to know before it goes out in the evening papers.”

She nods.

“I won’t know more until I hear from Izumi’s aide, who has to hear from the local authorities, but I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”

She manages a clipped, “Thanks,” and snaps her briefcase shut. She pulls it off the desk and starts for the exit. “If you’ll excuse me?”

“Of course,” Tenzin murmurs, and Lin pushes through the double doors of her office and goes in search of Hui.

-/-

The nightmares come back after that. They had faded a bit, once she had gotten her bending back, but with the news of the wreckage they are brought back full force.

She  drowns a hundred thousand times, and she’s back tied to the ground on Air Temple Island,  suffocating under the weight of the rain that pelts her face relentlessly.

_ He  _ comes into them, too, and she has to relive her lowest moment over and over and over again. The pain of the Equalists' shock wires, the press of his thumb to her forehead, and her lifeless slump to the suddenly quiet stones of Air Temple Island’s main plaza.

.

.

.

Later, much later, they find more wreckage, amongst the rivers that crisscross the tiny fishing village of Jang Hui.

They find a piece of a shin embedded in the metal of that wreckage, and some months later a skeletonized arm in faded water tribe colors washes ashore. A few scraps of cloth and rusted metal that match the last known clothes the bloodbending brothers were wearing are trawled up in a fishing net.

Tenzin tells her about each one.

With each find, it becomes clear that Amon and Tarrlock no longer walk the earth. That they will no longer cause her—or anybody else—harm ever again.

It gives her little comfort.

(She wanted to kill them herself.)

The frequency of nightmares fades a bit, slowly, over time. Once a night turns into two a week, then one a week, then one ever second or third week, if she’s lucky. It doesn’t stop them from being awful, from feeling all too real. Every time she closes her eyes and opens them into pitch darkness, or wakes up gasping with the feeling like she’s drowning still heavy in her chest, is one time too many.

Each time, it takes a shot or two of liquor to calm her nerves enough to get back to sleep.

-/-

To make matters worse, what with the finding of the wreckage of Amon and Tarrlock’s boat, and the recurring nightmares, the presidential election is a Spirit damned nightmare all on it’s own. And it’s one that she has front seat tickets for.

She almost wishes she’s wasn’t a citizen of Republic City so that she didn’t have to give a damn about the two politicians vying for political office while  _ also _ protecting them from assassination attempts.

She doesn’t like either man, for the record.

Quan is an experienced military man, a retired Commander in the United Forces.

Raiko is a consummate local politician.

They are both nonbenders and both popular with the people. Lin wonders if they still would be as popular if the people knew what they said behind closed doors.

Raiko is a condescending piece of garbage.

Quan is a misogynist.

Quan likes to talk down to her at security briefings, questions her authority, and often derides the skills of her department.

Raiko tag teams with him like some sort of oily slug seal, then attempts to spread balm over the wounds with almost certainly empty promises about her funding.

Raiko has an ego almost as impressive as his mustache.

Quan’s pride is as large as the Earth Nation, and twice as hard to knock down.

Both men are mindful of international politics, but are quick to throw anyone and everyone under the bus to achieve their ends...

Including Lin. 

If it hadn’t been her idea to get rid of the council in the first place and replace them with a democratically elected nonbender president, she would have thrown both of them into the Bay and run herself.

Being around them as much as she has to be before the election would be enough to drive anyone to drink, let alone a recovering alcoholic.

“You’re going to the next one,” she tells Saikhan with some amount of venom after a particularly nasty meeting. “I can’t be around them. I’ll kill them.”

“Sure,” he says, but she can see the fear in his eyes.

He hates politics, and he hates politicians.

Good. He needs the practice.

“I’ll have Hui set up a meeting with your secretary. You can tell me what you’ve learned.”

She watches him swallow her anger and say a stiff, “Of course, Chief Beifong.”

“Good. Dismissed.”

He leaves her office, and she watches him go with a smirk. He’ll be Chief one day, whether he likes it or not. Lin is determined to get him ready properly this time.

-/-

“Commander Bumi to see you, Chief,” Hui announces, then pulls the door wide and lets her former boss into the office.

“Bumi,” Lin says gratefully, standing and coming around the desk. “Thank you for coming.”

“Well you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Bumi says in lieu of greeting, and wraps an arm around her shoulders and squeezes in a way that instantly makes her stiffen up like a board. “ _ Good to see you again _ , too, Lin.  _ It’s been fifteen years, _ Lin.  _ We should have grabbed a drink one of those times you were in from shore leave,  _ Lin. And yes I agree, it is good to see you, it has been fifteen years, and we should have. Although I’d have seen you sooner if you actually dropped by the island at any point. What’s wrong? Tenzin doesn’t look so good now that he has a wife?”

“Get off me,” she growls, pushes him away after ducking out from under his shoulder. “And maybe if you hadn’t been so desperate to get laid on shore leave, or see Tenzin’s kids, or had actually bothered connecting with me, we could have gotten drinks, Bumi.”

Bumi cracks a grin. “There’s the Lin Beifong I know and love. Hui, get us some tea, would you?”

Hui nods and skirts away to do so.

“She is  _ my  _ assistant now, you know,” Lin says with just a tad of malice as she shows him over to her seating area.

Bumi holds up his hands in mock surrender and takes the bench facing the windows. “My apologies. Do you know how surreal it was, by the way, to be handed the phone by your seven-year-old niece and then hear the voice of your old aide-de-camp asking you if you have time in your schedule for a meeting with  _ Chief Beifong _ ? I had to check to make sure I woke up in the right year.”

“I happen to know you’re now retired,” Lin replies dryly as she sits opposite him and crosses one leg over her knee, “which is why I asked you to come. I have a favor to ask.”

“Oh now she tells me,” he jokes, and Hui comes in with the tea.

“You have the hour,” she reminds Lin as she sets the tray down on the table. “Pu’erh in the green pot, longjing in the black.”

“You remembered!” Bumi is delighted.

“Of course, sir,” Hui says with a smile, then disappears into her office and closes the door quietly behind her.

Lin needs tea to deal with Bumi. Preferably she’d be having something stronger when dealing with Bumi, but tea will have to do. So she leans forward and pours Bumi’s cup first, and when he takes it and sits back, she pours her own.

“So what’d you need little ol’ me for, Lin?” he asks, after she’s taken her first bracing sip. “It can’t be for my charming personality, I have it on good account I drive you crazy.”

Lin sighs and re-crosses her legs, and says with a completely straight face, “I’m assuming you know all about Republic City’s nonbender inequality problem, yes?”

He looks at her, takes in her Si Wong Desert dry delivery, and bursts out laughing. He laughs so hard he cries, and Lin can’t blame him. As the eldest nonbender child of the Avatar, he’s had it worse than most. It was one of the reasons he left the city to join the United Forces in the first place, from Lin’s understanding. To get away from the pressure and, most importantly, get away from the stigma.

When Bumi finally manages to stop laughing, he wipes a tear from his eye and says, “You might say I might know a thing or two, yeah.” A pause. “Why?”

“You’ve made your entire career fighting as a nonbender,” Lin says slowly, “strategizing, planning, winning, and I…well, I have not. And despite growing up with you it has come to my attention recently that I have grown up…privileged.”

“Is this a long, drawn out way of apologizing for all the times you kicked my ass when we sparred as kids? Because if so, six out of ten for the delivery, but I’ll take it.”

Lin grits her teeth. “I’m  _ trying _ to ask for your help, Bumi.”

She sees the moment he sobers up, when his grey eyes go from mischievous and joking to calm and serious, just like his father’s. He leans forward and sets his cup down on the table. 

“Why mine?”

“Because I trust you not to fuck up my department or kiss my ass,” she tells him cleanly. “You’ll do what’s right, and you won’t worry about my finer feelings.”

He stares at her for a long moment, then starts to chuckle. She can practically see the wheels in his tactician brain turning. “This is about that department reform thing, right? Tenzin was telling me about it.”

“Yes,” she says. “You’d be a contractor, but I have enough money in the budget to pay you well. Think of it as extra padding for that UF nest egg. And if that falls through for whatever reason, I’ll pay you myself.”

Bumi hums and picks up his cup, then leans back again, swirling what’s left of his tea around in it as he thinks. “What’s the end product?”

“A complete overhaul of our academy and arrest processes, the creation of a supplemental training program to ensure nonbender equality, and any other recommendations you might have to diminish nonbender exclusion and inequity in the department.“ She pauses. “We’ve already got a task force stripping the department down to parts and recommending nonbender officers for higher ranks, as well as a nonbender oversight role inside the department. You’d be working with them, as well as a team from PR and training to ensure the roll-out.”

Bumi looks grave, and she braces herself for the question before it comes. “And what if I recommend the esteemed Chief of Police steps down so a nonbender can replace her?”

Lin grimaces at the implication but knows it could be a possibility. “Then I’ll go quietly.”

“Atta girl.” He leans forward and pours himself a new cup of tea. “What’s the timeframe for it?”

“Nine months.”

He smiles crookedly at her and salutes her with his pu’erh. “Don’t worry—I can do it in six.”

-/-

She doesn’t normally keep a very close eye on the academy, but this cohort is different. 

The kid Saikhan calls  _ her rookie  _ when he thinks she can’t hear has moved beyond the halfway point, which means he might actually make it.

Two months into the academy, she steps into the ring across from Mako, and prepares to go a round with him.

It’s tradition for the new recruits to fight the Chief and get their asses roundly handed to them so they don’t get too big for their britches. This is the only fight she’s ever been nervous for.

It’s been a while since she’s fought a firebender. Firebenders don’t make up a large population of the officers, and her assistant isn’t exactly a fighter. Lin knows Mako has more than enough experience fighting benders tougher than she. He can also bend lightning, the very idea of which makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up and some deep, dark part of her brain very,  _ very _ unhappy. 

Mako steps into the ring across from her and bows stiffly. There’s uneasiness in his eyes. “Chief Beifong.”

“Mako,” she replies, and bows in return. She’s only got waist cables on, to make it fair, but she hates the things. They unbalance her center of gravity, and remind her of Su. She takes a couple of steps back and drops into her stance like she’s done a million times. “Let’s see what you’ve learned.”

He comes out of the gate with a hard swing that she dodges easily. His probending training is evident with the way he slings shots, the onslaught of fire hard and fast. She skips backwards, her bad hip twanging painfully at the hops, and she’s already cursing internally at how much faster he is than her.

She hasn’t been keeping up with her training, just going straight home after work to eat dinner and drink herself to sleep.

She hadn’t needed anything special but muscle memory to clean up with the others, but Mako’s different. 

He’s  _ good.  _

She ducks a fireball and feels it singe a lock of hair as it passes far too close for comfort.

Shit. 

She’s distinctly aware of all the other candidates watching her, but she feels the strongest gaze coming from Hui and Saikhan. They are standing across the room, arms over their chests, watching her like they  _ know. _

But she can’t focus on them right now.

She has to focus on this rookie firebender, who might actually beat her if she doesn’t pay attention.

She watches his eyes drift to her left side, her bad side, and she jumps just in time to avoid a ground shot to her feet, obviously meant to break her root.

She decides in midair it’s time to get serious. It wouldn’t do for the Chief of Police to be shown up by a cadet. 

Lin comes down hard, slamming into the earth, rippling it down and out from the point of impact. Mako stumbles back as the ground wobbles beneath his feet, his light and quick feet finally his undoing, and she grabs a flailing limb with a cable and tugs.

It’s over in two seconds. 

One moment he’s up, and another he’s down, with Lin’s cables wrapped tight around his legs and a sheet of rock encasing his torso.

“I give, I give!”

“Chief wins!” the instructor declares, and she lets the earth around his chest disintegrate. 

He sits up and unties the cables with his hands until she takes pity on him and rewinds the spools.

“Nice work kid,” she tells him, and leans down to help him up. “Don’t get cocky.”

“No, Chief,” he says, and she hauls him to his feet.

As they bring in the next candidates, Lin looks over at Saikhan and Hui. They are standing in deep conversation, not looking at her, but it’s the kind of whispering that doesn’t usually bode well for her. 

She frowns, but can’t dwell on it. She has rookies to take down a peg.

She puts the thought out of her mind and turns back to the ring. “Next.”

-/-

Her first panic attack doesn’t come for almost three months.

It’s not even at anything particularly exciting, in her opinion. The trigger is banal, simple, absolutely ridiculous (to her). Something she never had even thought about before.

It happens at a walk through for potential polling locations. Lin is deciding where the best location would be for her beat officers, for their corresponding Lieutenants, when it starts to rain.

There’s no lightning, no thunder, absolutely no warning whatsoever.

The heavens just open, she looks up in shock at the sudden deluge of water, and the second the water hits her face she’s gone.

_ Electricity crackling around her body. _

_ The feeling of a fist smashing into the side of her face, into her ribs, into her stomach. _

_ Her knees hitting the hard stone ground.  _

_ Amon’s shadow falling over her. _

_ His thumb against her forehead. _

_ The sudden heaviness of her armor. _

_ The quietness of the earth. _

_ The rain. _

_ The rain. _

_ The rain. _

She barely manages to make it through the rest of the walk through, somehow keeping it together until she can get back to the office, where she stumbles over to her couch and presses herself back into the corner, as far away from the windows and the downpour outside as she can manage.

She’s shaking all over, not just her hands, not just from the cold that comes with being soaked absolutely to the bone.

_ Pain. So much pain, all over. _

_ The grit in the armor she suddenly couldn’t get off. _

_ Her heart beating wildly in her chest. _

_ The lights of the temple swimming out of the fog. _

_ The brackish smell of the bay. _

_ The mug caked into the joints of her boots. _

_ The rain. _

_ The rain. _

_ The rain. _

Over and over and over again.

“You’re back earl—” she hears someone start to say, then silence as they freeze, rooted to the spot at the sight of Lin hunched up and dissociating on the couch in her own goddamn office.

A long silence.

The rain continues outside.

A rivulet of water runs from her hair down her neck, icy cold against her skin, and it starts all over again.

_ The smell of ozone. _

_ Her arms bound in front of her. _

_ The timbre of his voice. _

_ His thumb against her forehead. _

_ The metalic taste of blood in her mouth. _

_ The heavy thud of her body as they dumped her outside Headquarters. _

_ The rain. _

_ The rain. _

_ The rain. _

“Chief?”

Lin doesn’t respond.

“Okay,” she hears softly, and suddenly there’s a blanket, firebender warm, wrapped around her shoulders. “Chief? What’s going on?”

_ “The rain.” _

The presence leaves, and she hears a lock click closed, then all of the blinds being pulled along the windows. Then the presence comes back.

“You’re in Headquarters, Chief.” She realizes the voice is that of her assistant. “You’re safe. It’s just me.”

She zones back in, finally, agonizingly, and finds Hui perched on the coffee table beside her. The room is dark, but Hui’s put a little fire in a glass and it casts a warm glow around them. It flickers with the rise and fall of Hui’s chest, like a heartbeat.

“Chief,” Hui says hesitantly, “you with me?”

Her mouth is dry, like she’s run a marathon without drinking. She swallows heavily, coughs.

“Let’s get you out of the armor,” her assistant murmurs.

Lin’s too tired to bend. Even holding her head up feels like too much of an effort. Hui flicks the catches along her sides and helps her wrestle the heavy metal armor off her arms, off her torso, leaving her shivering in just her undershirt, pants, and drapes.

Her assistant rewarms the blanket with her fire breath and wraps it back around her.

“Tea, I think,” Hui says, mostly to herself.

Lin can’t bring herself to respond.

The phone rings, piercingly loud in the quiet.

Hui stands up immediately.

“Chief Beifong’s office,” she says as she takes the receiver off the hook. She listens to the caller. “I’m sorry, she’s not available at the moment. I know, and I’m very sorry. She was called into the field unexpectedly and has yet to return. No…no, I’m afraid I don’t know when she will be back, it’s very sensitive… Yes. Yes. I apologize, sir. If you have your secretary call me, I will be happy to reschedule at your earliest convenience. Thank you. Thank you for understanding. Good afternoon.”

She clicks the phone down and checks her watch, then looks at Lin. “Tea, Chief?”

“That’s…fine.”

Lin’s voice is rusty, like she hasn’t spoken in years.

Hui nods sharply, once, and disappears into her office. She obviously flicks on the electricity, because impossibly bright light suddenly streams in from the window above Lin’s head. Lin winces, then watches listlessly as Hui’s shadow moves around across the coffee table.

Hui is back a few minutes later, the usual teapot in one hand, a bundle of cloth and a box in the other. She carefully sets down the clothes and the box, and Lin watches Hui’s palms glow as she heats the pot up. When it’s whistling, Hui sets it aside to steep and picks up the cloth bundle once more.

“You should change, Chief,” she says quietly, holding it out to her, “if water and the rain is a trigger for you.”

She stares at Hui.

Her assistant sets the bundle down on the coffee table. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

She goes into her office and pulls the shade, plunging the room into darkness once again. Lin watches the little fire in the cup flicker for several minutes before sitting up and beginning to strip almost mechanically.

The bundle is actually a towel, her Chiefshirt and sweatpants, and a spare set of underthings. She dresses like a robot, clothes on over cold skin. She throws her wet things into a pile on the floor, then sits bent and hunched over on the couch until Hui returns what feels like an eternity later.

She pours Lin a cup of tea before disappearing with her wet clothes. Lin clutches the tea like a lifeline and reaches out to feel the earth molecules vibrating around in the cup to remind herself she still has her bending.

To remind herself that Amon is dead.

To remind herself that she’s right here, where she belongs.

To remind herself that she’s Chief of the Spiritdamned Republic City Police Department and she needs to  _ get a hold of herself _ .

A door opens near her. “Chief?”

Hui again.

“What?” she croaks.

“I’m clearing your schedule for the day.”

It’s not a question.

Lin sighs and closes her eyes.

Hui apparently takes it as tacit acceptance, because she heads back into her office and doesn’t resurface until Lin stands almost an hour later.

That night when Lin goes home, she drinks an entire bottle of baijiu.


	9. Game 1: Chrysanthemum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin's fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Season 2, and Lin's fall. 
> 
> As always, Linguini is the best beta ever!

Hui never mentions the panic attack again.

She calls Lin a car and sends her home, and the next morning greets her with tea and her schedule as if nothing had occurred. The only indication that it happened at all is Lin’s splitting, hangover-induced migraine and the fact her armor is sitting beside her desk, freshly oiled.

She looks at her assistant, then at the couch, and at the armor, and can’t find anything to say. So she doesn’t.

“What does today look like, Hui?” she asks instead, settling heavily into her desk chair and pulling her first batch of paperwork towards her.

And Hui tells her.

-/-

“Commander Bumi to see you, Chief.”

“How’s it hangin’, Lin?” Bumi asks as he strides into Lin’s office. “What’s goin’ on with my favorite Police Chief?”

“Let’s see,” Lin says testily, pushing up from her desk to stand, “the election is in two weeks and if an assassin doesn’t kill one or both of the candidates before then, I might myself.”

Bumi laughs. “Should the citizens of Republic City be grateful that the Republic City Police Department isn’t responsible for the new president’s security?”

“Hardly,” she all but growls as she shows him over to her seating area. “I’m having to hire new officers into Special Services specifically to fill the presidential escort roles.”

“I saw that. Nonbender Lieutenant in charge was a nice touch.”

“It wasn’t symbolic,” Lin says as they sit. “He was the best man for the position.”

Bumi pops a button on his jacket before sitting down as well. “Y’know, we haven’t had a good game of pai sho in a while.”

“Something for us to do with my infinite free time,” Lin says dryly. “How is the overhaul coming?”

“Well, I’ve got a nice list of officers you might want to look at for nonbender bias,” Bumi tells her, and pulls out a sheaf of papers from his coat.

He hands it to her and she takes it. She frowns down at the print, holding it just at the edge of her vision without her reading glasses. “This is…extensive.”

“You wanted my help.”

“I did.” She can feel the tension building in her neck. Another thing to add to the growing pile of shit she has to deal with. Raiko and Quan have been slinging mud at the department for months about the handling of the Equalist situation, and she can’t blame them. The citizens are angry. She’s angry.

She rubs at her temple and contemplates the drink she already wants to have.

“Hey, take a breath, Beifong,” Bumi says from across the table. “It’ll be alright.”

Easy for him to say. He didn’t have the weight of reconstructing the entire department  _ a second time _ on his shoulders.

“Thank you for this,” she says, setting the paper down on the table between them. “I’ll have Saikhan look into it right away. Is that all for today?”

Bumi chuckles and pulls out  _ another _ sheaf of paper from the  _ other _ side of his jacket. “Oh, ye of little faith. You think I’d come all the way out here if I didn’t have more than that?”

-/-

The elections, to her great relief, come and go.

Lin spends most of the actual day on edge. Hui has cleared her schedule, allowing her to spend the day stalking between polling stations, scaring the living daylights out of the beat cops who are slacking off, and fearing an attack that never comes.

She casts her own vote a little before the polls close, but for who she’d never tell.

Raiko wins by a tidy margin that is declared after four days of counting, day in, day out.

The tension doesn’t bleed out of her neck, out of her back, out of her shoulders until the victory party is complete, the newly elected president is bundled safely into a limousine, and the controlled explosions (alternatively known as fireworks) stop setting her teeth on edge with every boom that rattles the skyline.

She goes home, takes what feels like half a bottle of willowbark tablets to quell her raging tension-release migraine, and chases it with half a bottle of baijiu.

Then she lays on her couch with the lights out, pinching the bridge of her nose in pent up frustration, until she succumbs to sleep.

-/-

Graduation, to her immense displeasure, is the next day.

Her migraine is still there, as is the fatigue and cotton mouth that comes with a hangover, but she scrapes her hair back into a bun and puts on her dress blacks.

Graduation is the least favorite part of her job.

She hates the pomp, the circumstance, the dress uniform, the huge waste of her time, the booze filled after-party afterwards that even  _ she  _ hasn’t been able to get rid of. Frankly, she could take or leave the whole academy. Her only enjoyment as Chief is when the instructors bring her in to kick their asses.

The new crop of candidates is good, but they all are. She wouldn’t let them graduate if they weren’t.

But today she’s not focused on them.

Today’s the day _ her rookie _ graduates from the Academy.

She gives her customary speech, with the usual platitudes and inspirational messages slipped in by PR, and as usual she doesn’t mean a word. She doesn’t have time for useless praise.

She needs officers who can do their job, listen to instruction, and protect the citizens of Republic City at all costs.

Officers like how Mako is shaping up to become.

The rookies file up one by one, collecting up their diplomas and exchanging crisp salutes with her. It feels like a lifetime, but finally he is standing before her.

“Congratulations, Mako,” she stays stiffly, as she shakes his hand and passes him his diploma.

“Thank you, Chief,” he says, equally as stiff, but she can see the pride in his salute, in the shine in his eyes, in the crisp creases and spotless lapels of his dress uniform. It’s probably the first time he’s graduated from anything, been recognized by anyone and climbed there on his own merit completely by himself.

She salutes back, as is tradition, but she watches him walk off the stage for far longer than she should.

.

.

.

She sticks around the after party longer than she should, too. Korra and her friends descend on the bar and create a hubbub around Mako. They jostle him happily, ruffle his hair, and Korra peppers his face with kisses.

It reminds her of her own graduation, years ago.

She almost smiles, but then she thinks of her mother, her sister, and the memory sours.

She doesn’t need anyone.

She’s fine.

Saikhan brings her a glass of water when he sees her arrive, like always, and she feels like a traitor as she drinks it.

-/-

It’s almost a relief when the Avatar leaves Republic City for the South Pole.

With the Avatar gone from the city, there’s less potential for attack, less potential for Korra-styled shenanigans, and absolutely no chance of her and her friends careening around the city in Asami Sato’s vehicle, wrecking general havoc.

Thank the Spirits.

With her gone, the city feels at peace since Korra burst her way onto her streets almost a full year earlier. It’s like her departure takes a weight Lin didn’t know was on her chest until she’s left.

Of course it doesn’t last.

That would have made Lin’s life too easy.

“She’s started a  _ civil war _ ?” Lin asks, aghast, as she reads the latest intelligence memo Hui puts on her desk.

“It would appear so.”

Lin pinches the bridge of her nose and resists the urge to scream. She already needs a drink, and it’s barely eleven o’clock. She thinks, not for the first time in the past month, of the bottle of wine in her bottom drawer, then pushes away the thought almost as quickly as it came.

No. She would never stoop that low. Not again.

The entire damn reason that bottle is there is to remind her to have control. 

“I’ll need a meeting with General Iroh to determine a joint course of action to protect Republic City in case tensions escalate here,” she says instead, rubbing the newly-forming, entirely Korra-based migraine in her left temple. “And a meeting with all of the ACs before that to do the same.”

Hui disappears to make the calls.

Lin stares at the memo for a little bit longer, then throws it down on her desk in disgust.

She’s gonna kill that kid.

-/-

Sokka’s statue stares down at her as she stands outside the Southern Water Tribe Cultural Center. Night has fallen and the crowds have swelled considerably behind the barricades, loud and restless. There is tension in the air, thick and palpable.

Tensions between the Northern and Southern Water Tribes had never fully settled, ever since the north had reconnected with the south to “ _ help” _ them rebuild. Accusations of gentrification, colonization, speculative redevelopment, and the mismanagement of cultural resources had been hurled from the beginning. The distrust had been sown deep, tamped down by Aang and covered with a veneer of progress under industrialization.

The very same veneer of  _ progress _ that had given them the Equalist revolution.

It is only natural then, that after twenty years of inaction, the tensions between the North and South would flare again.

It’s only natural that there would be a clash in Republic City, where the largest amount of Water Tribe citizens live outside of the poles.

It’s only natural that it happens while she is Chief of Police.

Lin, naturally, is not happy.

She shouldn’t even have to be having to  _ deal with this. _

This is their parents’ fight, technically, now theirs by fault of death and defection of responsibility. And, of course, Kya and Bumi and Tenzin are conveniently out of the city, and Izumi’s dealing with her own problems as Fire Lord, leaving the ball squarely in Lin’s court.

So it’s now her issue, and hers alone.

Not to mention this is the first big incident since the reform. 

The police department can’t fuck this up.  _ She  _ can’t fuck this up.

She’ll kill all of them, her childhood friends, just as soon as she is finished killing Korra.

She stands underneath Sokka’s statue, one eagle eye on her officers, another one on the crowd. She’s running on about four hours of sleep, has been on shift for pushing thirteen hours, and desperately needs a drink to quell the tight feeling in her chest. Oh, and she has a headache, because of course she does. 

Could the Avatar have picked a worse day to be so unequivocally  _ Korra _ about the whole situation?

She peels away from her post and finds Mako.

“I want you around the back,” she tells him. “Watch the alleys. Don’t let anybody sneak in.”

“You got it, Chief,” he says, and salutes her before running to his new post.

“I’ve put Mako around back,” she tells Saikhan.

“Is he ready for that?”

“I’ll put him where I damn well please, Saikhan,” she snaps. He nods, stony face, and notes the new placement on his clipboard without another word.

She simmers and turns back to face the crowd. Her radio crackles at her belt, informing her and the rest of the force the Peace March is approaching the Cultural Center. She knows they are getting close as the jeering of the crowd gets louder, and finally the Avatar appears leading the way on her polar bear dog.

Lin shifts her weight off her bad hip and suppresses a sigh.

Soon, at least, this will all be over, and she’ll be able to go home.

…And then the windows of the Southern Water Tribe Cultural Center blow out behind her. Because of course they fucking do. 

.

.

.

She doesn’t go home until almost six in the morning, when the ashes of the Southern Water Tribe Cultural Center have finally cooled enough the Fire Department can assure her there is no chance of the building reigniting.

Sokka’s statue is stained with soot when she leaves, and her boots leave watery black footprints for blocks as water and ash drains out of the bottom of her armor.

She strips off her uniform as soon as she’s inside, throwing it all in the kitchen to deal with later.

Despite the fact she has to be back at the office by noon, she twists the cap off a bottle of baijiu and takes a slug.

-/-

Korra makes a giant scene in the bullpen of her station the same day the President dresses her down for not yet solving a terrorist action committed less than 24 hours beforehand.

Because of course she does.

It’s just the type of thing Korra would do.

Lin almost,  _ almost,  _ breaks into Sokka’s bottle of sea prune wine that afternoon but her schadenfreude at Mako and Korra’s relationship troubles saves her.

She’s angry with them. So,  _ so _ angry.

How  _ dare _ Korra have flared such an ostrichhorse shit situation into an  _ even bigger one? _

And how could Mako have failed her like this? How could he have let those dissenters escape?

When she goes home, she pours her nightcap and thinks back fondly on the destruction she wrought on Air Temple Island.

Mako really did get off easy.

She hopes he spends the night miserable and alone, just like her.

She smirks to herself as she takes her shot.

-/-

Why couldn’t Mako just  _ do his job? _

If he had just walked the beat like he was supposed to, protected the back of the Southern Water Tribe Cultural Center like he was supposed to, acted like the Spirits damned beat cop he  _ was, _ she wouldn’t be here, serving a fucking search warrant at his damn apartment.

She doesn’t want to believe it, but he has been acting strange.

He’s been poking around where he shouldn’t.

He’s been asking questions that seem far too knowledgeable about the situation.

She knows about his past with the Triple Threats. He’d disclosed it when it came up in his background check to become a cop. But she thought, she’d  _ hoped _ , she’d  _ seen _ the fact he’d changed, that at the time he’d gotten wrapped up with them he’d only been a desperate orphan struggling to protect his younger brother.

She’d understood.

She’d been there, after a fashion, and failed where he’d succeeded.

If she’d been in his situation, if her mother had been anyone other than Toph Beifong, she probably would have done the same.

So she’d vouched for him _. Personally. _

When her detectives come to her and say some Triple Threats had connected him to the Future Industries shipment bombing, her blood runs cold.

When they find the dufflebag of cash in his apartment, the explosives, her stomach twists.

“What are you doing with explosives, Mako?” she asks coolly, and he responds with the most stereotypical criminal response in the books.

“I don’t know where those came from,” he says desperately, “none of those are mine.”

Like she hasn’t heard that excuse a million times before.

She grits her teeth as Lu and Gang lead him from the apartment. The Chief of Police personally vouching for a crooked cop to be put on the force is not a good look. But the same Chief of Police that made it her mission to weed corruption out of the RCPD?

There’s no way this isn’t anything but bad.

It’s the apartment of  _ her rookie _ that she’s currently standing in.

It’s  _ her rookie _ that's been poking his nose where it doesn’t belong.

It’s  _ her rookie _ that now has evidence connecting to a major terrorist bombing found squarely in his possession.

She hangs her head and slams a fist into the doorframe of Mako’s apartment.

She refuses to cover this up like her mom did with Su.

There’s nothing she can do but face the bitter reality that this one’s on her, too.

-/-

She doesn’t discover how much she hates being back in the arena until she’s there.

She doesn’t want to be here. The lights are too bright, the crowd is too loud, and everywhere she looks she sees Equalists lurking in the shadows.

She doesn’t like movers, doesn’t trust Varrick any farther than she could throw him. He’s a slimy politician, the same as the rest of them, no matter how much he tries to guile the world with his crazy antics and glitzy premieres.

She stalks the colonnade of the top tier, even more on edge than the night outside the cultural center.

This is the perfect kind of event for Northern Water Tribe terrorists to attack, especially with the president in attendance. After her Department’s piss-poor performance of the past two weeks, there is absolutely no room for error tonight.

Officers skitter out of her way like beetles as they conduct their final checks before the big event. She yells at Lu and Gang for slacking off, then takes up position in the second tier vomitorium where she can see the whole crowd.

And then, of course, someone tries to kidnap the President.

And it’s not her officers that stop them, oh no.

It has to be  _ Bolin _ .

“Secure the President and call for backup immediately!” she snaps at her officers, then sprints for the stairs where three metalbending officers are staring dumbfounded at the scene playing out on the probending arena.

“With me!” she all but screams at them, and they race after her.

Her blood boils as she takes the stairs two at a time. How could she have been so wrong  _ again _ ?

She slides down the hallway, boots sparking on the concrete, and wrenches open the door to Varrick’s box just as one of the would-be kidnappers confesses it was the  _ mogul _ who sent them, not the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe.

Varrick is the man responsible.

Varrick sent the kidnappers.

Varrick bombed the Cultural Center.

Varrick stole all of Miss Sato’s equipment and supplies.

Just like Mako had been saying in interrogation for days.

Varrick stands from his seat, turns to leave, and Lin sees red.

_ “Where _ do you think you’re going?”

-/-

She lies to the President, fires Lu and Gang on the spot, but that’s only the beginning. She’s wasted time and resources, precious taxpayer dollars, and has nothing to show for it.

It’s  _ Mako _ who ran his own investigation because her detectives were too lazy to do the work.

It’s  _ Asami  _ that sets up a sting  _ for her own company _ because Lin had been too busy, too distracted, to make the connection.

It’s _ Bolin  _ who saves the president, not her, and not her officers.

She’s slipping.

It’s the alcohol, and she knows it.

Three incidents in a row since she started drinking again.

It has to be. There’s no other explanation.

She has to apologize to Mako, formally, properly, but she can’t bring herself to, especially not after that business with Korra and Asami.

She takes them to see Varrick in his prison cell instead.

When they race for the Northern Spirit Portal in Varrick’s battleship, she goes back to the office, because it’s closer than going home.

It’s almost midnight, most of the office staff have long since gone home.

She throws herself in her office chair and pulls the bottom drawer of her desk open and stares at the wine bottle that rolls out from under her files.

She pulls it out, sets it on her desk.

Stares at it some more.

The wine inside is a dark brown, the sign of good sea prune wine. The blue wax around the top is pristine, even after all these years. Sokka’s tag, with her name written in faded letters, still hangs around the neck.

She picks up the tag, runs her thumb over his handwriting, and watches as the sweat from her palms smudges the graphite.

After Aang, Sokka was her favorite Uncle. He listened to her bitch about her Mom, was there after the disastrous Su incident, held her in his arms and cried with her after her breakup with Tenzin.

She tenses her jaw and drops the tag.

She’s failed Sokka just as much as she’s failed Aang.

Just as much as she’s failed her mother.

She flexes her fingers, then in a fit of desperate, last minute control, she grabs the bottle and shoves it back into her drawer.

She stands all at once and slams the drawer closed with a kick, then storms out of her office.

She won’t.

She can’t.

She may have failed everyone around her, but she won’t fail herself.

-/-

Lin thinks she’s hallucinating when the fused form of Unalaq and the Dark Spirit appears in front of her.

She hasn’t had a drink in twenty-four hours.

Her whole body is shaking and she’s sweating profusely, but she’s on an airship with the president anyway.

She thought they would have been safe there, in the sky, nobody but her and her most trusted of metalbender officers.

Nobody would be able to kidnap the President during Harmonic Convergence, use him as ransom, do  _ anything else _ that might jeopardize the leadership of the United Republic if he just stayed within her sight.

Which means she has to be sober.

Which means she hasn’t had anything alcoholic, because she can’t fuck this up.

Which means she’s starting to detox when a giant spirit man who glows red around the edges beams down from the fucking purple sky and starts laying waste to the United Forces Navy ships stationed in her harbor.

“Sweet Agni,” Raiko breathes besides her, and then she knows it isn’t a figment of her imagination.

This is real.

Just like the giant beam of light that clips their stabilizer and catches the entire engine block alight.

With her metalbending she can feel the grinding gears, the tear and pop as the heat shreds rivets from their sheets, and her stomach rises into her throat as they go down,  _ fast. _

Fuck.

She has to protect the president.

She slams the handle to the bay door down and gestures for her metalbenders to ditch. They do, cables shooting out into the darkness as they swing free.

The ship yaws, and she doesn’t need to be a mathematician to know there are only seconds to impact. Fifteen at most, if she’s lucky.

She’s only going to have one shot at this, and her vision is so blurred it’s going to be a hell of a time.

The President rushes to her size, wraps his arms around her, and she casts about for an anchor to tie off to.

There’s nothing. Just glass and flat stone rush by as they fall.

Then she sees it, a stone head of something, poking out of the edge of a building they just passed.

She only has one shot at this.

She tightens her arm around the President and fires.

_ Don’t miss. Don’t miss. Don’t miss. _

Unlike her disastrous cable snap miss, this time her cables find their way home. They wrap around the head and tug them out of the ship. Raiko clings to her for dear life as they swing, momentarily weightless, before gravity slams them skidding into the roof of a building below.

Lin barely lands on her feet, and the President ends the slide on his knees.

The airship slams into the city somewhere behind them, exploding in a fireball of hydrogen and metal, but neither of them notice.

They are too busy staring at the giant spirit, and from there, on that precipice of the rooftop of their salvation, they watch as vines consume the city.

.

.

.

Lin can pinpoint that moment, months later, as the point when her spirit breaks.

She gets Raiko to safety, to the bunker below Republic City, and hopes it is enough.

Then she goes to the station.

It’s absolute pandemonium. There are officers scurrying everywhere, bringing messages to and fro as every switchboard light glows insistently with calls, her operators trying desperately to coordinate a response.

Saikhan is in the command center, where she should be.

The officers start shouting something about a giant blue person, a ball of light in the shape of a little girl, a glowing vortex that makes the first giant spirit explode, but she doesn’t hear any of it.

She, Lin Beifong, has once again failed to protect her city.

Someone else, once again, has had to pick up the slack when she failed.

She walks numbly up the stairs, through the bullpen, and into the offices of upper management. Like the night before, it’s a ghost town, but for a completely different reason.

She goes into her office.

She locks the door.

She pulls the shades into the main office.

She opens the bottom drawer of her desk.

She pulls out the wine and forms a knife from her armor.

She cuts the wax from the top with a deft flick of her wrist.

She stares at the bottle.

She tries to put it down, but can’t.

The weight of the world, of the supernatural bullshit going on outside her station, of her own personal failure press against her like a mountain.

It’s too much.

She’s done.

She’s tired.

She’s failed to save her own city for the last time.

Lin Beifong pulls out the cork, throws it across the room, and without another pause for thought puts her lips to the edge of the bottle and  _ drinks. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *skitters off stage left to avoid rotten tomatoes* 
> 
> Wish I had more space in this fic to explore Lin's relationship with Sokka. Ah well, next fanfic, yes? 
> 
> ALSO YOU'LL BE HAPPY NEXT CHAPTER, I PROMISE.


	10. Game 1: Rock (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin hits rock bottom.

The slam of papers against a hard wood surface startles her into consciousness. She jolts awake and immediately regrets it; her head pounds, and the early morning light filtering in from the windows stabs into her eyes. She covers them immediately with one hand to stop the blinding light sensitivity and swears softly to herself.

“Good morning, Chief,” says Saikhan’s unmistakable gravel from somewhere to her right.

Lin’s stomach, which is somewhere in her throat, bottoms out in dread. She tries to speak, but the words can’t get past her cotton-filled mouth.

Oh Spirits. She’s still drunk.

The clank of boots as Saikhan sits sounds like a train derailment. “Enjoy your nightcap, did you?”

Lin twists her head, squints past the pain, and sees the empty wine bottle. The night comes rushing back all at once; the giant spirit monsters doing battle in Yue Bay, barely saving the president, Republic City covered in vines, and Lin chugging twenty-year-old sea prune wine as her city smoldered around her.

Her getting drunk, absolutely shit-faced, and falling asleep on the couch in her office.

The shame of the failure, of the slip, of the discovery, threatens to overwhelm her.

She grits her teeth.

“Get. Out.”

“I don’t think we can do that, Chief,” says another voice, and Lin realizes that Hui is here, too.

Lin sits up and looks around her, slowly taking in the scene around her. Saikhan is sitting on the bench across from her, dressed like he got ready in a hurry, and Hui is standing like a sentry by the double doors into the main office.

Both of them are looking at her with unreadable expressions, but there’s no denying what this is.

Hui breaks the silence first.

“How long has it been since you started drinking again, Chief?”

Lin wants to open up the floor like a tin can and disappear into the bowels of the Republic City Police Department Headquarters, but she’s still drunk enough her bending won’t quite come to her. Instead she rounds on Saikhan and hisses, “You  _ told  _ her?”

“She  _ found _ you,” Saikhan growls back, slamming a hand onto the stack of papers. Lin winces at the sound. “Spirits above, Lin.”

“That’s Chief to you,” Lin snaps reflexively.

“Is it?” Saikhan asks, aghast. “Because it sure as hell feels like I should be calling you Captain right now instead.”

The shame instantly comes back, but so does the rage. “Don’t you dare—­”

“What?” her assistant chief snaps back. “Don’t I dare remind you of when you  _ drank at work when you were a Captain _ when you’re here, twenty years later, passed out in your office because you  _ drank an entire bottle of wine _ ? I’m not an idiot, Lin!”

In Lin’s periphery, Hui shifts and looks through the windows of her office door nervously. “Assistant Chief, perhaps we shouldn’t have this conversation here. It’s almost seven thirty.”

Saikhan looks at her, nods, then turns back and stares at Lin for so long Lin’s drunk brain idly wonders if she should check to see if there’s something on her face.

“Go home,” Saikhan finally says. “Leave with Hui like you’re going to a meeting and go home. And Hui? Make sure she gets there.”

“Yes, sir,” Hui says stiffly, then turns to her. "Do you have anything you'd like to bring home, Chief?"

“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” Lin asks, feeling her temper starting to bubble up, her filters absolutely shot by the alcohol still.

Saikhan looks at her, really _ looks _ , and even drunk Lin can see the pain in his dark eyes. “My best friend, Lin.”

She stares at him, trying to comprehend.

“Go home.” He turns to Hui. “I’ll be there in a minute. I just have to—”

“I understand.” The firebender nods, then crosses the room and collects up the pile of paperwork Saikhan had slammed on the table. “Let’s go, Chief. I’ll drive.”

Lin is numb.

They know.

Hui knows.

Hui found her.

She drank at work and Hui found her.

She’s still drunk.

Saikhan is pissed. 

Saikhan knows she relapsed.

_ Fuck. _

“Chief?” Hui prompts, and she nods robotically.

Hui turns off the lights in their offices and they walk for the elevators; Lin follows her as if on autopilot. The station, mercifully, is still empty. Most of the day shift, the office staff, aren’t due in for another thirty minutes. The ride down the elevators is silent, save for the squealing of the gears and wheels, a sound that does nothing for Lin’s half-hangover.

Lin almost wishes there were more people here to see this walk of shame, because then maybe it would justify the complete and utter sense of failure and mortification she’s feeling.

They reach the lobby, and Hui grabs the keys to Lin’s departmental car out of the motorpool.

“Early morning today,” the attendant says as he passes them over.

“After last night?” Hui asks him as she signs the clipboard. “As if any of us have slept.”

He laughs, and Lin wants to die. Lin wants to yell. Instead she just stands there until Hui beckons for her to follow like she’s a recalcitrant child.

They get into the Chief car, with its special gold roof in its special place in the lot, and Lin is somehow reminded of all the disastrous things that she has ever done just by looking at the damn car. All the bad decisions, all the missed snaps, all the lives she wasn’t able to save.

She presses her lips together and leans back on the bench seat, pinching the bridge of her nose as Hui starts the engine.

“If you have anything to say—”

“I don’t,” Hui interrupts quickly, and throws the car into the gear.

Lin’s stomach lurches as her assistant pulls the car out of the spot, and by the time Hui pulls out into traffic, onto a different street than normal because there’s a giant fuck off tree growing out of the middle of the road, Lin feels like she’s going to be sick.

She closes her eyes and breathes in and out of her nose, trying to quell the motion-induced nausea.

“Chief—?”

“I’m fine.”

Hui’s silence says,  _ no. You’re not. _

It takes almost three times longer than usual to get to Lin’s apartment, because half of the streets are blocked by trees and another quarter are blocked by rubble. Hui parks around back and gets out. Lin sits there in the car for a long moment, then realizes Hui is waiting for her to get out.

She slowly unbuckles her seatbelt and slinks out of the car. She feels like a dog who pissed in the wrong spot.

And maybe she did.

Hui follows her, and Lin dimly registers the fact she intends to come inside.

“You don’t—”

“I do,” Hui says firmly, in a tone that brokers no objection.

She must be exceptionally angry to use that tone with Lin. In all the time she has worked for Lin, Hui has never been angry—frustrated, yes, but never cool, never icy. It’s entirely incongruous with the picture she has of her assistant in her mind.

But then again, her boss being an alcoholic is probably incongruous with the reality Hui thought she knew.

Hui is disgusted, and she has every right to be.

Lin presses her lips together but shuffles through the back doors. Her assistant follows her inside, past the doorman and into the elevator. She settles into her customary parade rest beside Lin as the meter slowly ticks onto the sixth floor.

“Are you going to come inside, too?” Lin asks snidely. 

Hui’s silence is all the answer she needs.

The elevator doors open, and Lin fishes in her pocket for her keys. When she opens her front door, she’s distinctly aware that her apartment is in shambles—not as bad as the day Tenzin found her, but still bad.

Lin tosses her key in the bowl, bends the door closed behind them, and looks back at Hui.

She sees the look in her eyes shift as she takes in the bottles on the sideboard, on the coffee table. There’s understanding, but something else.

“How long have you known?” Her voice is rougher than she expected.

Hui glances at her. “Since the day Saikhan hired me, Chief.”

Lin feels the rage lick up inside her again. How dare he. “He told you?”

“With all due respect, Chief,” her assistant replies, “making sure you weren’t drinking was one of my duties.”

Lin scoffs in disbelief and gestures bitterly with one hand around the apartment. “You failed.”

“Let me rephrase: making sure you weren’t drinking  _ at work  _ was one of my duties.”

The coolness is back in Hui’s voice, and Lin can’t stand to look at her. All this time, all of these years since she’d been made Chief, and Hui had been watching her at Saikhan’s behest.

“You failed that, too.”

Hui says nothing.

Lin turns her back on her and bends her armor off, letting it clatter to the floor, and picks up one of the bottles of baijiu off the sideboard.

“Really?” Hui asks in exasperation as Lin pours herself a shot.

“What are you going to do,” Lin challenges dryly, “stop me?”

Hui isn’t a fighter. Even with only her fists, only the slate tile of her apartment, Lin could easily wipe the floor with her. She sees something pass behind Hui’s eyes, but she doesn’t rise to the bait.

Lin scoffs and takes the shot. The alcohol scalds on the way down, but it’s better than the way her shame burns in the pit of her stomach. She drops the shot glass on the sideboard and steps into her living room, and Hui follows behind her and lingers in the threshold.

She turns on her. “Are you just here to babysit me, then?”

“Until AC Saikhan arrives.”

“Oh fuck off, Hui.”

She watches her take the hit, seesHui’s eyes widen momentarily, sees her stiffen, and feels vindicated. Finally, someone else is in as much pain as she is.

“If you say that to me again,” Hui says quietly, “I will quit today.”

“Then quit,” Lin snarls, and takes her bottle to the couch.

There’s a knock on the door; three loud, sharp raps. Hui turns on her heel and goes to answer it. A moment later, Saikhan charges into her living room like a fire-bulldog with something to prove.

“What the fuck is your problem?” he asks as soon as he sees her, sees the bottle in her hand. “Spirits above, Lin—you fell off the wagon and you didn’t think to  _ say something  _ to me?”

“This is about you, is it?” 

“Don’t you pull that self-deprecating shit with me,” Saikhan growls. “I’ve had your back. I’ve had your back for  _ eighteen years _ . I didn’t say anything—I didn’t say a single, Spirit-damned thing.”

Lin can’t look at him, so she looks at the bottle in her hands instead.

“How long has this been going on?” Saikhan asks. “Since the panic attack? When?”

Lin’s head snaps up and glares at her assistant. “Hui!”

Hui presses her lips together but says nothing, only settles deeper into her parade rest.

Her mind races; so she hadn’t been imagining all the whispered conversations and convert looks. The significant stares when they thought she wasn’t looking. The weekly meetings Hui would have with him.

“That’s what you two do, then?” Lin asks. “You gossip about me behind my back? You can’t trust me to do my job for a goddamn second?”

Saikhan levels her with a cold expression. “Nobody can ever trust an alcoholic not to drink.”

His words cut. They cut deeper than Lin would like to admit. Her fingers tighten around the neck of the bottle in her hands and she looks away. She can’t stand to look at them.

Silence stretches between them.

“So was it the panic attack that started this?” Saikhan finally asks, frustration clear in his tone.

“No.”

“Then when, Lin?”

“You know  _ exactly _ when.”

She looks at him and she sees the moment when he finally figures it out, when realization dawns in his dark eyes.

“You had a beer,” he says faintly. “That night. In the break room. You—”

“She what?” Hui cuts in, aghast, breaking parade rest to step forward. “AC, you let—?!”

"I was dealing with a city under siege,” Saikhan thunders, eyes flashing. “My best friend had just been dropped nearly dead at my door and Amon had kidnapped the last four airbenders in the world. I’m sorry if I was a bit  _ preoccupied, _ Hui!"

Hui falters, takes a step back, lets her carefully maintained demeanor slide back into place. “Apologies, sir.”

“Would you stop calling me that?” Lin asks finally, and she stands unsteadily.

Saikhan turns back to her. “Excuse me?”

“I’m not your best friend,” she spits. “I don’t have friends.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Silence passes between them. Lin glares at him unsteadily.

They may have known each other for thirty years, but he’s not. He’s not her friend. The sandwiches on stakeouts when they were young were a courtesy. The beers on her tab were only the result of the redistribution of her inheritance. The years of sparring after work were just training. The way she could read his body language, communicate with him without words, just the result of him being her right hand. 

To say nothing of the drinks that weren't drinks.

Saikhan isn’t her friend, he’s her colleague.

Her underling.

He’s not her friend, because the only friends she’s ever had, the only family she’s ever had, have all left her.

They’ve all left her and it doesn’t matter, because she’s better off alone.

Saikhan runs a hand over his balding head and sighs. He’s tired. They’re all tired. It’s been a long morning, and an even longer day.

“Where did you even _ find _ sea prune wine, Lin?” Saikhan asks, exasperated. “You’ve had that thing in your desk forever.”

She swallows. “It was a gift. From Councilman Sokka.” A pause. “Or it would have been.”

“If he hadn’t died?”

_ If he hadn’t been talked out of it, _ she thinks.

_ If giving me alcohol didn’t suddenly become an enormously bad idea. _

_ If I hadn’t become an alcoholic. _

She presses her lips together and doesn’t respond, just sits back on her couch and sets the bottle of baijiu still in her hands on the coffee table.

Saikahn sighs and comes over and sits on the edge of the table. She’d normally yell at him for doing so, but she’s done. She cradles her head in one hand and stares at the pai sho board, away from him. Stuck between a rock, a hard place, and her failed accountability.

“You need to get help, Chief,” Saikhan says gruffly. “Therapy, AA, something.”

“I can’t go to AA,” Lin says tightly, painfully, not daring to look up. “Everyone in this city knows my fucking face.”

“Yes, your sister made it very recognizable,” he snarks, deadpan. She hisses like he scalded her. What the fuck is his problem?! “What did you do last time?”

She looks up at him blankly.

“You disappeared for a week, Avatar Aang came and cleared out your desk, and when you came back you weren’t drinking. You go to the hospital or something?”

She shook her head.

She doesn’t want to discuss this with him. She just wants them to leave.

“You have to do something,” he tells her earnestly. “You can’t work like this. You can’t come to—”

He pauses, and she sees a look of horror pass over his features. “Oh Spirits. That morning with the President. You were—”

“Drunk?” Lin supplies dully. “Yes. From the night before.”

Saikhan groans and drags a hand over his weather-beaten face.

“I told you,” Hui says quietly from the kitchen, where she had gone when Lin and Saikhan were yelling at each other.

Lin glances at her, having almost forgotten she was there. Hui had alerted him, like she was supposed to. Why hadn’t either of them said anything then?

“You came back from the South Pole and there was something wrong with you,” Saikhan says, his voice suddenly gentle. “We didn’t know if it was alcohol or the trauma.”

“And you decided it was the trauma.”

“Yes.”

“It was,” she says bitterly. She is seized with the urge to grab her bottle and chug, but resists, barely.

If only she had been able to resist the night before.

“When else?”

Lin doesn’t respond. She watches Hui instead, watches as her assistant takes the kettle off the stove and fills it from the tap, then cups her hands around the metal to heat the water within.

“Lin,” Saikhan says insistently, “when else did you come to the station drunk?”

“I didn’t. No other times.”

He scoffs, and she looks to see that he clearly doesn’t believe her.

“You want to listen to my heartbeat?” She asks, enraged, and she bends off the soles of her boots so she can put her feet flat on the floor. “Do it.”

“You know I can’t do that, Lin.”

She scowls at him. “I’m not lying.”

“I can’t know that.”

It’s the phrase he uses on criminals in interrogation. She’s heard him say it a million times, but never directed at her.

“Did you drink on the job?”

“No.”

“What was last night?”

She presses her lips together and looks away. She’ll be lucky if she can ever look the man in the face again after this. “A moment of weakness.”

“...Right.”

His voice is dry and heavy with sarcasm. He definitely doesn’t believe her. She presses her lips together tighter and clenches her fists.

Hui comes over with her tea set, and Saikhan stands so she can put the tray down. Lin never has visitors. There’s nowhere for them to sit.

“You didn’t answer before, Chief,” Hui says as she puts the mesh strainer in one cup and carefully pours the tea. “Where did you go the first time?”

“I detoxed on Air Temple Island,” she snaps, because she’s tired, and stressed, and her headache is getting worse and every nerve in her body feels like a live wire and she wants them to leave. “You want me to do it again?”

“You’re going to have to,” Hui says quietly, and for whatever reason it hits Lin hard.

This is the end of the line.

She’s been caught.

She’s done.

“You either go to a hospital or we call Master Katara,” Saikhan says gruffly. “I’m not letting you come back until you’re detoxed.”

Lin grits her teeth.

“Yue General or Master Katara, Chief?”

He’s serious. They both are.

She closes her eyes and resists the urge to lash out. Who the hell do these two think they are?

Lin idly wonders if she could take Saikhan in a fight, thinks she could. But she’s also still partially drunk and not wearing her armor. They’d trash the apartment. And then Saikhan would probably have to arrest her for drunk and disorderly.

She pinches the bridge of her nose in frustration.

“Chief,” Saikhan says when she doesn’t respond. “Yue General or Master Katara?”

There’s no way she’s going to Yue General to detox. It’s too public, and she fucking hates hospitals. 

A muscle twitches in her jaw. “Katara.”

Saikhan nods and turns to Hui. “Will you go downstairs and make the call? Tell her we’ll put her on the first boat south.”

“Of course.” Hui stands and leaves the tea things to Saikhan. The apartment door closes behind her.

Lin pinches the bridge of her nose harder, and wills the pressure to take her headache away. 

She’ll be gone for three weeks. Three weeks is more than enough time for the press to catch up to the fact she hasn’t been seen in Republic City since the spirit attack. Her presence, or lack therefore, amongst all of the destruction and vines will be conspicuous.

She won’t be able to hide it any longer.

Someone will go digging.

Reporters will find someone willing to talk.

A bartender, an old underling, an ex-acolyte.

It doesn’t matter who, really.

They’ll find them, pay them enough to say just what they want, and run the story.

And then everyone will know that she, Lin Beifong, is an alcoholic.

-/-

To both Lin and Saikhan’s surprise, When Hui comes back almost an hour later, she’s not alone.

The firebender unlocks the door, steps in, and Kya walks in behind Hui, carrying her healer kit.

Lin stares. “What the hell are you doing here?” 

Kya gives her a tired look. “Treating you, apparently.”

Saikhan stands and goes to confer quietly with Hui, but Lin doesn’t really notice because she only has eyes for Kya. She hasn’t spoken to her since the South Pole almost seven months ago. They had run into each other briefly almost a week ago now, at the probending arena, but Lin hadn’t been in any condition to talk to her then. She’d been too busy wallowing in her guilt over the attempted kidnapping to even say hello.

Lin licks her bottom lip, suddenly and uncharacteristically nervous. Katara’s hovering she could deal with, given enough lead time. 

But Kya? Here? Now?

“I thought you were in Harbor City dealing with Harmonic Convergence?” she asks stupidly.

“We just got back.” A pause. “Literally. We were unloading Oogi when an acolyte came out with the phone.”

Lin glares at Hui, who has the decency to at least look somewhat apologetic.

“Master Katara said she has too many people in her hut to take you,” Hui explains, “but she said that Master Kya was on her way to Republic City.”

Kya’s brow furrows in concern and she looks between Hui, Saikhan, and Lin in confusion. “You called Mom before you called Tenzin? What’s going on?”

Saikhan and Hui share a cautious glance.

“Oh, now you’re hesitant to tell people,” Lin spits bitterly. “Sit down, Kya.”

“We’ll leave you two alone,” Saikhan says. Lin follows them with her seismic sense out into the hall, where they take up posts just outside of her range of feeling.

Fuck Saikhan, she thinks bitterly. And fuck Hui, too.

Kya looks around the room as they leave and, seeing no other place to sit, settles beside her on the couch. Lin can see her looking her over, checking for obvious signs of injury. “Were you hurt in the spirit attack?”

Lin shakes her head.

“Were you hurt in the cleanup?”

Lin shakes her head again.

The healer’s brow knit in confusion. “Then why am I here?”

Lin takes a deep breath, lets out a shuddering sigh, and figures she might as well look Kya in the eye as she tells her. “Because I’m an alcoholic, Kya. And I need to detox.”

Kya’s blue eyes grow wide. “You’re—what?”

“Don’t make me say it again.”

She watches as Kya processes—she’s always been easy to read, all of Katara and Aang’s children have always been, and this moment is no exception. She watches her brow furrow in denial, her mouth tighten in understanding, and then relax in acceptance.

“For how long?” Kya finally asks.

Lin swallows. “Eighteen years.”

She can see Kya thinking. Running over all the drinks Lin has ever had--or not had--in her hands. All the parties. All the events. That night in Kya’s apartments in the South Pole. 

Finally, shockingly, Kya smiles at her good naturedly. “So is that why Uncle Sokka’s stash went missing?”

Lin chokes out a surprised laugh. “ _ Really _ ?”

“I came back from a trip and tried to find a drink. I was sorely disappointed.” Kya turns to set her healer bag on the coffee table, then stops as she catches sight of the pai sho board. Lin’s stomach drops as Kya’s eyes widen. “Wait, that’s—”

“Aang’s set,” Lin confirms, cutting her off at the pass.

“What—?” Kya looks at her, hurt in her eyes. Lin hates it. “Why do you have Dad’s pai sho set?”

Lin sighs. It’s a valid question. Bumi had played more pai sho with Aang than she had; rightfully it should have been his. Fighting the knot in her stomach, she leans over and flips over a tile at random to show Kya the numbers burnt into the back.

“I see,” Kya says softly, then, “I didn’t know.”

“Good.”

Kya contemplates, then puts her bag on the floor instead. She uncaps her water skin, bends the water around her hand and turns to her, businesslike. “How much have you had to drink today?”

“…An entire bottle of wine?”

She nods. “Are you still intoxicated?”

Lin presses her lips together and looks down at her hands.

The older woman makes a soft noise and brings her water-covered hand up to Lin’s temple. Lin lets her eyes fall closed, and as the water in Kya’s hand glows she feels her headache begin to abate.

“When did you break sobriety?”

The question is mild, but clinical. Kya is in full healer mode.

Lin takes a deep breath. “The night Amon…”

She trails off. She still can’t finish the sentence. Kya doesn’t seem to mind; her hand slips down, the glow passing over her shoulders, her chest.

“Tenzin didn’t tell you?”

“Shh.” Lin realizes Kya’s checking her vitals. She falls quiet, and lets Kya listen to her breathing. Without breaking away, Kya fishes a small timepiece out of her bag and checks it against the patter of Lin’s heart. Finally, Kya pulls her hand away.

“What didn’t Tenzin tell me?”

Lin shakes her head.

“Lin.”

“Ask him about the day he found me,” she says tightly.

Kya looks at her critically, but seems to accept it for now. She bends the water back into her satchel and caps it with one hand. “Have you detoxed before?”

She nods.

“When?”

“Eighteen years ago.” A pause. “The first time. Your mother…”

Kya tilts her head in understanding. “I’ll give her a call later. You—”

“I’m going to pay you,” Lin interrupts. “This isn’t a favor. It’s a job.”

Kya’s expression softens. “Lin—”

“No,” she says, and she stands to pace. She can do that now, now that her head no longer feels like it’s going to explode if her head moves more than an inch in either directly. “I don’t need your charity, Kya. I’ve had—your family has given me enough.”

Kya stands as well. “Lin—”

“I said I’m paying you,” Lin snaps sharply. “It’s not up for debate.”

“Alright,” Kya replies gamely. “I’ll be sure to send you an invoice.”

“Good.”

“Pack a bag,” Kay tells her, and she stoops to close her healer bag. “I’m going to call Tenzin and tell him you’ll be in residence.”

Panic immediately seizes at her chest at that. “You can’t.”

“Lin,” Kya says, voice tinged in exasperation, “I can’t run you through detox in your apartment.”

It’s a good point but Lin still doesn’t want Tenzin to know.

“He’s going to find out sooner or later,” the older woman presses. “I’m assuming you called Mom first because you didn’t want to go to the hospital?”

Lin hesitates, the nods.

“Well I’m sorry you’ve got me, but there’s no way you’re detoxing here. I wouldn’t even begin to be able to treat you here. Do you even have a bathtub?”

She does, but that’s beside the point. “I’m not going to Air Temple Island.”

“I won’t be able to get cleared to treat you at the hospital for weeks,” Kya tells her, frustration edging into her voice, “and if you don’t get back to work soon, the press will start asking questions. We can hide you from the public on the island, in Mom’s old healing hut, but there’s no way we can hide this  _ from  _ the island. Tenzin? Maybe. But the kids? The acolytes? Bumi? Bolin and Mako are probably going to be moving in, too.”

“I get it,” Lin grinds out.

“Do you?”

Lin crosses her arms over her chest.

“I’m not even going to try,” Kya continues, “and I won't treat you if you don't let me at least give him the courtesy of saying there will be treatment happening."

“Don’t you have patient-client confidentiality?”

“Sure,” she says, putting a hand on her hip, and Lin thinks irrationally that she looks like her mother, “but Tenzin’s not stupid, Lin. Once you’re on the island, if someone sees you in the healing suite, even just sees the lights on, it’s over. And you know that if Tenzin doesn’t put it together, Bumi will.”

She grits her teeth together. She knows Kya’s right. She knows it’s best to have Tenzin and Bumi on their side, if nothing else than to play interference and keep the kids out of Kya’s hair.

“Fine. But only them.”

Kya nods. “Would you like to be the one who tells them?”

Lin hesitates, then shakes her head. She has no reason to lay herself bare to two more people today. Three has been more than enough.

“Alright,” Kya says gently, and stoops to pick up her bag. “Start packing. I’m going to talk to your folks out there, then call Tenzin, and then we’ll get you back to the island and get started, okay?”

Lin breathes in, fills her lungs with calming oxygen, and breathes out slowly to regulate the anxiety already spooling in her shoulderblades like the cables that normally sit there.

“Fine.”

“Good,” Kya says softly, and she slips from the apartment, leaving Lin alone with her thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Told you you'd be happy. Our girl is back. :) She can't make it all better but damn if she isn't going to try. 
> 
> Your reviews give me life, so if you like what you're reading, please drop a comment!


	11. Game 1: Boat (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin detoxes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LET THE PINING BEGIN!
> 
> Thanks always to Linguini for betaing. We went over this chapter about a thousand times, and it's one of my favorite's as a result. :)

Lin discovers that detox is just as big a bitch the second time around as the first.

Katara’s old healing suite sits opposite the household, tucked under the shadow of the Temple proper. Lin has been patched up in the exam rooms more times than she could count, but she has never stayed the night.

Kya flicks on the lights and slides open the screen to the middle patient room. The thin paper doors squeak on their tracks to reveal a small bedside table to the right of a bed, just like the cells in the women’s dormitory. But in this case, the bed has wheels and rails that raise and lower, and the wardrobe is even simpler than the ones across the island.

“Get comfy,” Kya tells Lin. “I have to fill the pool.”

Lin sets her duffle bag on the bed and starts to robotically unpack. She still can’t believe she’s here, that Kya knows, that she got caught at all. The past twenty four hours don’t seem real.

She pulls a few pairs of pants and shirts out of her bag and puts them in the wardrobe along with her underthings. She hears the distant twisting of taps and the rushing of water splattering against stone.

The last thing in her bag is the tight bundle of tea leaves that Katara had pressed into her hands before they had left the compound for Harbor City. The tea she had promised to drink but hadn’t even touched.

She swallows, picks up the tea, and takes it in to Kya.

The waterbender is standing on the healer platform, carefully bending impurities out of the water as it fills the basin. She notices Lin enter and, with one hand holding a hovering ball of unwanted minerals, she kneels to stop the taps. “What’s up?”

“Your mother gave me tea,” Lin says, and hands the paper and twine bundle it to Kya.

“For detox?”

Lin nods.

Kya bends the waste minerals into a bucket, then takes the tea. She unties the string, carefully unfolds the paper, and bends her head to sniff the leaves within.

“Smells like the usual blend,” she says with a nod. She pokes through the contents carefully, and apparently satisfied with them, folds the paper back together and wraps it with the twine to keep the leaves fresh. “It’s a good thing we have some. I’ll have to send an acolyte out to Moons, but not immediately.”

She steps off the platform and nestles the tea in a small kitchenette off the main healing room. Kya comes back and settles her hands on her hips. “Have you eaten today?”

Lin shakes her head.

“Dining room it is,” Kya says decisively, and she steers Lin out towards the family quarters. In short order Lin finds herself in the kitchen, leaning against the counter as Kya presses a large bowl of rice drowning in fresh vegetables and sauce, fried sweet potatoes, and a perfectly fried egg.

“Eat up,” she says as she serves herself a considerably smaller portion.

Lin stares down at the bowl in dismay. “Who are you trying to feed, a komodo rhino?”

“I need to get as many calories in you as possible before you can’t keep anything down,” Kya tells her sternly, accentuating her point by gesturing pointedly with the cooking chopsticks. “I’ve got about six hours—maybe ten if I’m lucky—before you start puking. Eat.”

Lin never thought she would be idly threatened with a pair of cooking chopsticks by a master waterbender, but stranger things had happened today. She sighs and pulls a pair of chopsticks from the cupboard where they’ve lived for her entire life.

It’s well past noon, so the room is empty save for her and Kya. Lin’s first bite is delicious, and she quickly takes another. Now that the hangover is starting to abate, the hunger is setting in, and she realizes she’s starving. She clears half of her bowl before she looks up and she sees Kya leaning on the opposite counter, quietly doing the same.

“Lin?”

“What?”

“I’m going to call Mom as soon as we’re done here,” Kya says gently, leaning her chopsticks down against the edge of her bowl. “Is there anything you want me to tell me before I hear it from her?”

“You know it all already.”

“How long was your first detox?”

“Six days.”

Kya nods. “Then we can probably expect a similar time period. Is your drinking heavier or lighter than the first time?”

She closes her eyes and sets her bowl aside, then wraps her shaking fingers around the lip of the counter. She’s not shaking because of the alcohol for once, but because of nerves. “Heavier.”

“A bit longer then. A full week, maybe a bit longer.”

Lin runs her tongue over her teeth. “Have you done this before?”

“What? Help someone detox?”

“Yes.”

“Tons,” Kya replies, and picks up her chopsticks once again. “Contrary to popular belief, I do actually know what I’m doing.”

“I didn’t doubt it,” Lin says quietly. “You’re not Master Kya for nothing.”

Kya’s lips twitch up into a soft smile, and she bites into a piece of fried sweet potato with relish. “You’re in good hands.”

.

.

.

The tremors in her hands start around dinner time, and by midnight she’s sweating. She empties the contents of her stomach into a bucket for the first of many, many times just as the clock strikes three.

The sound of her retching causes Kya to materialize in the doorway. She waits for the nausea to pass, then flicks the light on and checks the bucket.

“Looks like we timed your meals correctly,” she murmurs as Lin falls back into bed, panting and sweating. “Do you think you can drink?”

Lin shakes her head. Kya hums and bends water from the pitcher, then sets one glowing hand on Lin’s chest. For a second, nothing happens, but then Lin slowly registers she’s no longer drenched in sweat.

“Fever is up,” Kya says, mostly to herself, and pulls away. “Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”

Lin closes her eyes, and doesn’t open them as Kya slides the doors closed, then open and shut a few minutes later.

“I’m going to give you an infusion of willowbark.”

“No,” Lin rasps, and curls over on her side, away from Kya. “I’ll suffer like I deserve.”

She hears Kya suck on her teeth, an admonishing noise that makes Lin curl tighter. One of Kya’s cool hands settles gently on her feverish arm.

“You deserve the same compassion you give others, Lin,” the waterbender says softly. “You don’t deserve to be in any more misery than you have to.”

Lin doesn’t respond.

Kya sighs. “ _ Please  _ let me administer the willowbark, or it’s going to make  _ my  _ job a hell of a lot more difficult.”

She swallows. Kya is already doing her a favor, even if she is paying her. 

“…Fine.”

“Thank you.” She hears Kya fussing with something, then the room glows and Lin feels water slowly spreading across her back. The mass moves up and down her spine, and she feels a slow sense of relief, relief that stays once the water is gone and it’s just Kya’s hands pressed against the thin cotton of her undershirt.

“There, that should keep you hydrated and your fever down.” Kya tugs the shade over the window, then walks to the door and turns out the light. “Try and get some sleep. I’ll be back to check on you in a few hours.”

.

.

.

_ She’s in the dark again. _

_ She wakes up in the pitch blackness, the cloying silence around her anything but comforting. _

_ “Lin?” says Tenzin’s voice so close as if he’s right beside her, and she startles like she always does. _

_ “Tenzin?” she asks, even though she knows it won’t do any good. _

_ “Lin!” _

_ Korra’s voice, which is starting to play a larger role in her dreams these days. _

_ “Lin!” _

_ Saikhan. _

_ She definitely doesn’t want to hear his voice right now. She grits her teeth and waits for the next voice to come, and something runs down the side of her face.  _

_ She startles, and catches it with her thumb. It’s wet. She wipes her hand off on her shirt and is startled to feel dampness. _

_ She’s hot. _

_ She’s sweating. _

_ Wait, she’s  _ hot. 

_ This is new. _

_ It’s never hot, here, never cold. Just dark. Just quiet. _

_ She looks around wildly. What is happening? _

_ “Lin!” _

_ Hui. Always Hui’s voice right after Saikhan. _

_ She doesn’t want to hear her voice either. _

_ “Lin!” _

_ She whirls towards Hui’s voice, confused by the second call, and to her shock sees a light bobbing her way in the darkness.  _

_ It comes closer, and closer, until Hui materializes out of the inky blackness, cradling a small fire in a cup. _

_ “Hui?” she asks numbly.  _

_ She doesn’t respond, only walks past her like a wraith. Lin whirls around, suddenly desperate. _

_ “Hui!” _

_ Her assistant turns, looks at her, and her lips curl in disgust. _

_ “Fuck off, Lin,” she says coolly, and the darkness swallows Hui right in front of her. _

_ She’s alone  _ _ again _ _. _

_ And she’s cold. _

.

.

.

Lin wakes with a startled gasp and finds herself once  again  drenched in sweat. She’s in her patient bed on Air Temple Island, and the room is dark save for the moonlight streaming in via the window.

She sits up, which takes some effort, and her head swims at the movement.

She wipes the sweat from her brow onto her shoulder and pants softly. That dream, that nightmare, has been the same for seven months.

Why the sudden change?

She pushes herself to the edge of the bed and pours herself a glass of water from the pitcher, only just managing with how hard her hands and body are shaking.

She’s fully into the detox now, and she knows it’s only a matter of time before the hallucinations start again. 

Lin isn’t a praying woman, but she absolutely does not want Hui or Saikhan to make an appearance in them.

She doesn’t know what they’ll say. What they’ll do.

All she knows is it won’t be good.

“Lin?” She looks up and Kya is standing at the entrance to her patient room. She’s changed and her hair is down like she was getting ready for bed. It shines like spun silver in the moonlight and Lin is momentarily transfixed. “Lin? Are you alright?”

Lin snaps out of it and shakes her head. “M’Fine.” She takes a shaky sip of her water. “Just...hot.”

“I can see that.” With a gentle motion, Kya dries the sweat from her back and from where it beads along her upper lip. “You’ve got another few hours until I can administer another dose of willowbark.”

“It’s fine,” she manages again, and tips the rest of the glass back. “Go back to bed.”

Kya frowns and comes into the room, but only to open the window.

“I’ll leave the door open to hopefully give you a draft,” she says as she heads. “Although in a few hours, you’ll probably be shivering and want more blankets.”

Lin scoffs, and Kya gives her a slight smile, then disappears off for the healer quarters.

Lin lays back down and tries to get to sleep, but only lasts another twenty minutes before her body protests the water and she pukes it all into the bucket by her bedside.

.

.

.

Her first seizure comes without warning.

She just knows that one moment she’s conscious, if delirious, in bed, and the next she’s waking up in the cold waters of the healing bath.

The water presses up against her neck, her back, her chest, and she tries to sit up but immediately slips under the surface. It’s enough to immediately trigger a panic attack.

“Woah, woah,” says a gruff voice as she surfaces, violently, just for a second, “is she seizing again?”

There’s a splash beside her, a body pressing against hers, and she lashes out; someone grabs her arm, pins it to her side, and she struggles, scratching flesh with her nails as she tries to get away.

“Help me get her out,” comes Kya’s strained voice above her.

“Hey, hey, Lin,” comes the first voice again, but she’s too far gone. She’s back in the plaza, in the nightmare, water on all sides.

Somebody wraps their arms around her and she yells. She can feel metal nearby and she claws for it desperately.

Something clangs loudly, whistles through the air, and two people yelp.

“Angi! That almost hit—”

“Don’t let her bend, Bum!”

There’s a hand on her face, and glowing fills her vision.

“Lin, Lin it’s Kya. You’re safe, Lin, you’re in the healing hunt. It’s just Kya and Bumi.”

The world slowly fades back into focus. She’s flat on her back of the healing suite, and Kya’s crouched above her, absolutely soaked from the waist down. Bumi swims into her vision, his front just as wet and his hair more disheveled than normal.

She’s wet, too. Her hair and clothes stick to her body like paint, and she rolls over to gag and hyperventilate as a rivulet runs from her bangs down the side of her face.

“I think it’s the water,” Kya says, voice wavering in uncertainty, but a second later Lin is dry and her clothes and hair once again sag with the forces of gravity. “Lin, are you alright?”

Her chest is still heaving too hard to answer.

Kya gets up, and a second later both of her hands are on either side of Lin’s head. The world glows, and Lin falls back into blissful unconsciousness.

.

.

.

“Easy,” murmurs Kya’s voice, and Lin ascertains she’s waking up during a healing session. She’s not sure what time it is, but the room is bright from a lamp in the corner and from the water in Kya’s hands.

Lin watches weakly as herbs swirl in the water that Kya applies to her stomach. She’s flat on her back, instead of the recovery position Kya’s been leaving her in since she’s been puking her guts out every few hours since this began.

“Good morning, Lin,” Kya says softly, “I’m trying to keep you from throwing up so much. How are you feeling?”

The light is too bright. Lin closes her eyes and suppresses a whimper. 

“There’s willowbark in the poultice, too,” the older woman tells her. “Your fever is up again.”

She feels like shit. Her entire body aches, like the flu but a million times worse, and her head isn’t far behind. She opens her eyes again but closes them when she sees two of Kya, and she realizes that she’s shivering while laying perfectly still.

“Fuck this,” she grinds out, and Kya laughs sympathetically.

“What hurts?”

“Everything.”

“Detox does that.” The water splits and Lin can feel Kya’s hand guiding the new, smaller ball  up her chest.

“Back hurt?” she asks.

Lin nods.

“How about the shoulders?”

Lin nods again.

“Let me see if I can help that,” Kya hums. Lin feels her hand shift, over her shoulder, behind her neck. The water slides with it, and suddenly she’s back in the pool.

She chokes, gasps, sits straight up and coughs frantically at the feeling of sudden phantom drowning. The water Kya’s holding splashes down against the bed, soaking the sheets, her back, her hair, and that does nothing to quell the rising panic tightening her chest.

“Hey, hey, woah,” Kya says, placing a hand on her shoulder.

Lin can’t stand the touch, can’t stand to  _ be  _ touched. She shoves her away, then rolls over and hacks over the edge of the bed. Kya scrambles for the bucket, but Lin shoves that away, too.

She grips the sheets, tries to focus, as she tries to force air into her lungs.

She’s on Air Temple Island.

She’s wet.

She’s drowning.

But Amon’s not here.

It’s just Kya.

It’s just Kya trying to help her through detox.

It’s just Kya.

The waterbender in question hesitates, but after a second takes a deep breath and takes a step back. Lin feels the water lift out of her clothes and looks up just in time to see Kya bend it out the open window. It splashes on the ground outside, forgotten.

She’s no longer wet, but the feeling remains.

“Fuck,” she spits, and slams a hand against the bed.

“Lin,” Kya says softly, gently, and she’s beside her again, “let me help.”

“You  _ can’t _ .”

“I can,” Kya insists. “You’re having a panic attack.”

_ “I know!”  _ Lin snarls, and Kya is quiet as she processes.

“...Is it the water?”

“Yes.”

A pause. “But only to the neck and back?”

Lin closes her eyes, breathes in, and tries to count to ten. She gets to five before her head catches up to all the movement, the vertigo and double vision returns with a vengeance, and she spatters what little remains in her stomach into the bucket.

Kya makes a soft noise and sets a gentle hand on her back. She doesn’t remove it until she’s eased Lin back into the recovery position and Lin has fallen back into a fitful sleep.

.

.

.

Lin sleeps for some time, broken intermittently by the sounds of the acolytes, or the shrieks of Tenzin’s kids playing airball, and the bells in the tower.

She comes to hours later in a bright room, and rolls over to see a figure in orange and yellow robes, with a bald head and blue tattoos sitting in a chair by the door, quietly reading.

Aang looks up at her movement and smiles. “Lin.”

The rage overcomes her before she can stop it.

“You betrayed me,” she hisses, and she reaches for her earthbending. Something behind her cracks, and then a part of the back wall blows in and the figure yelps but airbends below it without a second to spare. The stone blows through the paper doors with a thunderous crash and the building creaks dangerously, but she doesn’t care.

All she knows is her anger at Aang, the fact she’s here and that her entire life is crumbling, and that she wouldn’t be here if he’d—just—

She levers up on her arm and tries to stand, tries to get up, but her head spins and the room sways.

“Lin,” Aang says, standing quickly, “it’s me!”

“I know who you are,” she growls, and a column erupts from the floor. He avoids it neatly with airbending, but there’s panic in his eyes.

The remnants of the door are yanked open. “Lin!”

Katara stands before her, in the wreckage of the room, but there’s something wrong. Her hair is the wrong color, and she’s too tall, but the room sways again and Lin can’t focus on that.

“What’s going on?”

Katara’s voice is alarmed, but there’s something wrong with it.

“I don’t know, she just started attacking me,” Aang sputters, which is quite unlike him. The Aang Lin knows is always calm and serene, even in the most adverse of circumstances.

She grits through the vertigo, the double vision, the confusion, and forces herself to stand. “You lied to me, Uncle Aang!”

“Oh Spirits,” Katara breathes, “she thinks you’re Dad.”

Before Lin can parse the statement, there’s a rumble of the earth from behind them. Lin spins to face the new threat, but just finds a blank wall. The wall she’d blown out to attack Aang with is suddenly whole. She squints in confusion. She hadn’t done that, had she?

Tentacles of water suddenly wrap around her, slamming her into the floor, and glowing almost immediately fills her vision. She struggles, but quickly succumbs to the sudden urge to sleep.

“Sorry, Lin,” Katara says softly as she fades, but with Kya’s voice.

.

.

.

She wakes to the sound of familiar voices. The screen doors to her patient room are firmly closed, but even feverish and half-delirious, she recognizes Saikhan’s voice immediately.

“—good thing I came when I did.”

“I know,” Kya says gratefully. “Thank you, Saikhan. You distracted her enough that I could get her out.”

“Sorry about the wall. It’s not pretty but—”

“It’s fine,” she assures him. “I’ll make her fix it when she’s ready. She’ll probably die of shame.”

Lin squints, as if that would help her understanding. She can’t figure out what they’re talking about.

“Besides the—” Saikhan hesitates “—well, you know. How is she doing?”

“She’s progressing as expected,” Kya says quietly, so quietly that Lin has to strain to hear. “It’s been a rough few hours.”

“She’s strong,” she hears Saikhan say. “If anybody can push through and come out on top...”

Kya hums softly, the kind of hum Lin knows means she’s thinking. “And you plan to have her back to work immediately?”

“As soon as we can manage, when you give your clearance. We’d be lost without her.”

“Good, it will give her something to focus on besides her recovery.”

“I’ll get out of your hair. Thank you for taking the time to see me.”

“Of course. And thanks again for the wall. I’d let you see her but—”

“She wouldn’t want me to be seen like that.” Saikhan finishes gruffly. “Besides it sounds like she’s having a rough time of it. Best let her sleep.”

A soft noise from Kya. “Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you, Master Kya. Have a good day.”

“You, too.”

Saikhan’s boots clomp out, and Lin fades back out of consciousness.

.

.

.

Lin can’t keep anything down, not even water, so after three days Kya has to use waterbending to hydrate her and push medication into her so she doesn’t die of fever before she can fully detox.

She wakes up and Kya is above her, and she’s glowing. No, Kya’s not glowing, it’s the water she has hovering over Lin’s chest. No, on her chest. It’s slowly seeping into her skin.

“Oh Lin,” Kya says softly, and she reaches out and tucks a sweaty lock of Lin’s hair behind her ear. “What am I going to do with you?”

Lin rolls over and throws up, narrowly missing the bucket and instead splattering Kya’s feet in sick.

“So much for sedating you,” the healer murmurs, and bends her vomit off her boots.

.

.

.

She’s surrounded by water.

She’s floating, the back of her head is wet, and panic momentarily seizes in her chest. She lurches up again, but this time she doesn’t sink. There’s something— no, someone—holding her afloat in the healing bath. Two warm hands press against her back, her head resting in the crook of an elbow.

She looks up and sees Kya kneeling above her, and she can feel the water moving with the back and forth movement of her arms. She looks to the other side and sees Tenzin, watches the glow from the healing water passing over his face.

“Hold her head up a little more, Ten,” says Kya’s voice, then her eyes meet Lin’s and she says, “I’m sorry Lin, I’m almost done.”

“What’s going on?” Lin rasps in a rare, coherent moment. Whatever this is, it’s enough to keep the panic from crawling up her neck. She doesn’t feel like she’s drowning.

“You had another seizure,” Tenzin tells her, then readjusts his grip on her body. She floats a centimeter of two higher, and Kya nods in approval without breaking form. Tenzin looks down at her. “Are you going to attack me again?”

Lin doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

The water feels warm, and she dimly realizes Kya must have heated it for her comfort.

Whatever Kya is doing, whatever bending she’s doing to counteract or treat the effects of the seizures, it doesn’t do anything to help the weight of her eyelids, or the bone dead exhaustion in her soul.

She’s tired. She’s so, so tired.

She hears Kya saying something, but it doesn’t register, so she just closes her eyes and slips back into unconsciousness.

.

.

.

_ She wakes up in a bed in Zaofu, which is ridiculous because she’s never set foot in the  _ _ fucking city her sister birthed. _

_ She sits up and looks around. _

_ She’s in a small room decorated lavishly, with artifacts from across the Earth Kingdom and slick modern accents that make her angry just to look at. She’s always hated  _ _ the city Su’s founded _ _ , even just from watching the newsreels at the movers or catching the photos in the papers. _

_ Republic City is a mix of old and new architecture, sensible stone-veneer on the skyscrapers and square forms. It’s lively, fully of people from all over the world and from all walks of life. Zaofu is just cold, pretentious platinum that twists into unnatural spires, stuffed to the brim with only the best. She would have hated it even if it hadn’t been made by Su on seed money she’d weaseled out of their grandparents. _

_ There’s a radio on the bedside table, Shiro Shinobi’s voice warbles out of it. _ “Chief Beifong continues to recover on Air Temple Island after being injured in the Spirit Vaatu attack. Get well soon, Chief!”

_ “Oh, good, you’re up,” says Su’s voice. Lin looks up, and her sister is there, dressed in the stylish tunic and overdress she had seen her wear in the papers. “Are you ready to see the city? You can see all the things my wonderful husband has made, and meet the children, and see all the ways you’ve failed.” _

_ “Excuse me?” she asks in disbelief. _

_ “Take a look in the mirror, Lin,” Su says, and suddenly Lin’s staring at her own reflection. Her haggard expression, the lines in her face, the scars on her cheek. “Everything’s perfect here except you.” _

_ Lin blinks, shakes her head, and the mirror shatters, revealing Su once again. _

_ “If you move here, we can fix that for you.” _

_ A paper slaps itself into her lap. She looks and there’s a picture of her above the fold. _

LIN BEIFONG: BROKE, BITTER, AND ALONE, MOVES TO ZAOFU

_ “Don’t worry, we can fix that. I just want you to be a part of the family. We’re blood, Lin.” _

_ Lin growls and jumps out of the bed, sprints for the door, but its locked. She tries to feel for the metal in the lock, but nothing. She hears her sister laugh, that high nasally laugh she fucking hated when they were kids, and turns around to see the room full of Su and her husband and her way-too-many-children. _

_ She’s trapped against the door. She doesn’t even know why they’re there, where they came from, but Lin’s seen them grow up in the photographs included in the thirty-something passive aggressive New Year’s cards Su has sent her ever since the split, and there is something haunting about their eyes. _

_ “Oh, Lin,” Su simpers as her and her family close in. “Everyone knows you can’t bend platinum.” _

She wakes up again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like what you read, please consider leaving a comment :)


	12. Game 1: Knotweed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin starts again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter of Game 1! I'll be taking a month long break to recenter myself and get Game 2 ready to be published, so I hope you enjoy.

Lin wakes up on Air Temple Island, in Katara’s healing suite, in a patient bed.

It’s exactly the same as the last time she woke up here, except Bumi is sitting in the chair by the door. There’s a portable radio on the floor, and he’s humming along to quiet jazz as he counts stitches on the tiniest knitting project she’s ever seen.

She squints at him and the tiny pink whatever-it-is, trying to figure out if this is real life or just another hallucination. “What the flameo are you doing?”

He looks up from his knitting needles and grins at her. “And a good morning to you too, Lin.”

She sits up. Her head, for once, isn’t swimming. “What are you doing here?”

“Knitting a sweater for Bum-Ju,” Bumi replies, holding up the Angi-forsaken thing in his hands as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Lin doesn’t know who Bum-Ju is, why the sweater looks like it could clothe a small grapefruit, or why she cares.

When she doesn’t respond, Bumi sighs and puts the project back in his lap. “I’m covering for Kya. She’s exhausted—you really kicked the shit out of us last night, kid.”

Kid. She hasn’t been  _ kid  _ in so long.

More importantly, she doesn’t know what the hell Bumi is talking about.

Apparently her confusion is written all over her face, because Bumi picks up his knitting once again and says conversationally, “Did you know you earthbend when you hallucinate?”

She sighs and runs a hand through her hair. It’s greasy, like it hasn’t been washed in days. She looks around and discovers there are no clocks in the room. “What time is it?”

“Little after noon,” Bumi says with a nod at the radio. “It’s the lunch time power hour.”

Lin swears she is never going to retire and go soft like Bumi has. She shakes her head and slowly eases her feet over the edge of the bed.

“Woah! What are you doing?”

“Standing,” she growls, then pitches forward almost as soon as she puts weight on her legs.

Bumi yelps and drops his knitting with a clatter; she falls into the meat of his shoulder, bashing her chin painfully against the bone and jarring her teeth.

“Nope, no. No no, no.” He steers her back into bed. “You are  _ definitely  _ not ready for that, missy.”

“Call me that again and I’ll rip out your spleen."

Bumi rolls his eyes. “Real threatening, hot shot. You sit tight and I’ll go get Kya. And don’t get up, or she’ll kick your ass.”

Lin considers it grimly. Kya probably would.

Bumi disappears, and Lin hears quiet conversation in the next room. A few minutes later, he returns trailing Kya. She does look exhausted; her hair is rumpled and unkempt, like it hasn’t been brushed in some time, and her clothes are wrinkled. There are deep bags under her eyes, as if she hasn’t slept well for days, but she lights up as she sees that Lin is awake and coherent.

“Lin,” she says gratefully, and immediately pulls water out of the jug to coat her hands. “Welcome to the world of the living.”

Lin raises an eyebrow, but lets Kya nudge her onto her back so she can check her vitals.

“Your fever’s finally down,” the healer says cheerfully after a moment or two of quiet bending, “and your aura is settling, too.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

Bumi giggles as he settles back into his chair. Kya shoots her brother a glare, then turns back to Lin in the bed.

“You might be finally be coming out of it,” she pronounces as she places a water-covered hand to Lin’s forehead, and there is relief in her voice.

“About damn time.”

Lin shoots her own glare at Bumi, but can’t move lest she disturb Kya’s bending. She quietly takes stock of the situation; her body does still ache, but not like before, and her head doesn’t swim or hurt. She just feels weak, incredibly weak, like she hasn’t eaten for days.

“How long has it been?” she asks as Kya bends the water back into the pitcher, except for a small amount which she deposits into a glass.

“Including today?” Kya picks up the glass, then puts a hand on Lin’s shoulder and helps her sit up. “Today is day eight.”

“Eight days?!”

“You’ve been incredibly sick, Lin,” the healer says gently, and she presses the glass into Lin’s hand. “Drink this.”

Lin doesn’t deny it, but stares at the glass with trepidation. She hasn’t been able to keep anything down since the beginning, and she isn’t keen on throwing up again. She hesitantly puts her lips against the cool glass and takes a sip.

Water has never tasted so good in her life.

She quickly downs the glass, and finds it only just barely quenches her thirst. 

“Sip this next one,” Kya advises, and adjusts Lin’s bed so the back is up before bending her a second glass. “Your body is going to have to get used to things again.”

Lin waits until the water stops sloshing before she sips it. When she keeps down the first glass and half of the second, Kya seems happy enough.

“I’m going to go tell Tenzin,” the waterbender says, starting for the door. “Bumi, could you—?”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n,” he says, giving her a mock salute before settling more firmly in his seat with his knitting.

It really does look like a sweater for a grapefruit, Lin thinks.

Kya turns back to Lin, and Lin sees a twinkle in her eyes for the first time in days. “If you throw up, please do it into the bucket this time.”

Lin vaguely remembers being sick on Kya’s shoes and feels herself flush in humiliation. Kya winks and sails out of the room, closing the screen behind her.

Lin raises the glass to her lips again. “She seems happy.”

“You’ve been really sick,” Bumi replies without looking up from his tiny sleeve, parroting his sister’s earlier words. “She’s probably glad you aren’t actively dying anymore.”

That sobers Lin.

She puts the glass down, suddenly no longer thirsty. She stares down at it, watching the water vibrating gently in time with the movement of her breathing. Eight days. Eight days she’s been in this healing hut, half-crazed from fever, apparently seizing, and otherwise vomiting her guts out.

She can’t believe she’s been away from the station for eight days.

She can’t believe detox was somehow  _ worse _ the second time around.

…much, much worse, if the bags under Kya’s eyes are any indication.

She sighs, closes her eyes, and rests her head on the pillow. “I need to talk to Saikhan.”

“No, you don’t.”

She turns her head and glares at Bumi. He takes his own sweet time finishing counting his stitches instead of looking at her.

“I need to talk to Saikhan, Bumi,” she tries again.

“So get up and call him,” Bumi challenges.

The front doors to the healing hut bang open, startling them both.

“Lin!”

“Oh spirits,” Lin murmurs just as Bumi grins and says, “This should be good.”

Tenzin sweeps through the patient room doors and immediately takes her hands in his the second he reaches her bedside. “Lin I’m so glad to hear you’re doing better.”

“You have a wife, Tenzin,” she reminds him dryly, yanking her hands from his grasp. “Don’t make it weird.”

He sputters, then strokes his beard and rearranges his robes self-consciously. “At least you’re feeling up to making jokes.”

“Lin Beifong? Making jokes in my healing hut?” Kya asks as she comes back in, carrying a tray with a covered bowl and a spoon. “Can’t be. I think you’re in the wrong room.”

Lin rolls her eyes.

“Both of you, out,” Kya shoos her brothers with a nod of her head towards the door. “You can harass Lin later.”

“And we were just getting started,” Bumi teases, but collects up his knitting and turns off the radio.

“Tenzin,” Lin starts as Bumi pushes his younger brother out, “if you could call Saikhan—”

“Tenzin, if you call Saikhan I will personally make every last second of your life for the next month a living hell,” Kya says with a falsely cheery voice. “Nobody is calling anybody, and that  _ includes _ Hui. Now out!”

Both Bumi and Tenzin scurry from the healing hut, and Kya sighs in exasperation. She nudges the door closed with her foot then comes over to the bed.

“You keeping the water down okay?”

Lin nods.

“Good. Soup’s on.” Kya kicks out the legs on the tray and sets it carefully over Lin’s legs. “If you can keep this down, you can try solid foods tomorrow.”

Lin lifts the lid of the bowl, inspects the contents, then sighs. “You, me, and brown bone broth. Must it always be this way?”

Kya arches an eyebrow, gets it, then bursts out laughing. Lin lets a corner of her mouth slip up, too. The sound of Kya’s laugh is, for some reason, music to Lin’s ears.

“I’ve missed that,” Kya says, pointing at her with a smile as she opens the door. “I’ve missed you. Now drink your broth, Beifong, I’m going to make tea.”

Lin watches her go, then sits back against the raised bed and stares at the bowl on her tray as the realization dawns.

Air Temple Island is a strictly vegetarian island. To get bone broth, Kya must have bought it especially for her, or made it herself.

Lin picks up the spoon and carefully dips it into the broth. The cooling fat crackles across the top, and when she skims through it she can see the spices swirling at the bottom. Her hands shake as she spoons a little up to her mouth. It’s rich, creamy, and smooth, with a kick of something on the back end that’s  _ definitely  _ hot flake.

Homemade.

Definitely homemade.

She’s still pondering the implications of homemade bone broth when Kya comes back in with a steaming teapot. She still looks tired, but there’s a spring in her step.

“Hui says your favorite is longjing,” Kya says as she pours her a cup. “Drink up.”

Lin takes it, almost raises it to her lips, then takes an actual look at the contents. “…Kya.”

“Yes?” she asks innocently.

“This is the fucking detox tea.”

Kya smiles at her and pats her patronizingly, and perhaps a bit threateningly, on the leg. “So it is. And you’ll drink it, or you’ll regret it.”

Lin closes her eyes and contemplates murdering the waterbending master that had spent years trotting the globe and used the knowledge from her travels to open a renowned healing suite of her own upon return to the South Pole. The woman best known for being Avatar Aang and Master Katara’s only daughter. The woman whom Lin knew for being a lifelong pain in her ass.

She contemplates the murder and how she might get away with it, but only for a moment.

Kya pats her leg once more. “Drink it, Lin.”

Lin sighs, but nods, and for once in her life does as she’s told. 

-/-

“How long do you intend to keep me prisoner here?” Lin asks Kya later that evening, when Kya comes with her dinner and detox tea.

“Can you walk without assistance?”

“I wouldn’t know,” is Lin’s sardonic reply.

Kya rolls her eyes and sets the tray on Lin’s bed. “Well eat first, and if you keep this down through the healing session, we’ll see about trying to walk.”

The metalbender sighs, sets her newspaper to the side, and takes the lid off her bowl. “Soup again?”

“This time with kelp, egg, and silky tofu.”

“Thrilling.”

Kya cracks a smile and picks up the second bowl on the tray, then settles at the end of the bed. Lin looks at the cup of tea and decides to get it over with. She downs it like she would a shot, then gratefully accepts the glass of water that Kya bends her.

“I know it’s vile,” the older woman says apologetically, “but it’s the best for the job at hand.”

“Twenty years and you healers can’t manage to create something better?” Lin asks gruffly.

“Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s not good.”

Lin rolls her eyes, sets down the water glass, and picks up her bowl. Her hands still shake a little, but not nearly as much as before. She sips at the soup straight from the ceramic; kelp soup has never been her favorite, but after eight days of nothing but water and broth, the squeak of kelp between her teeth is almost enjoyable.

Kya is quiet beside her, a fact Lin is thankful for. Now that she is conscious, Bumi and Tenzin had been in and out all afternoon, dropping by between meditation sessions, bringing tea and newspapers and books, trying to be helpful but only getting on her nerves.

She sips at the soup, then carefully picks up the evening paper she had been reading earlier. She clearly isn’t all the way recovered—even the simple act of reading the broadsheets tire her out, and if she reads for more than a page or two the words swim.

That could also have been the fact she wasn’t wearing her reading glasses. She hadn’t thought to bring them with her.

She tries to focus on the page over her soup but finds she can’t. She sets it down on the tray and taps the column she had been trying, and failing, to read for the past thirty minutes. “What’s the deal with these spirit vines?”

“We’re not sure,” Kya admits, and takes the paper to see what Lin had been reading. “They appeared in the attack and the president is running Korra ragged trying to get rid of them.”

Lin scowls. Of course he was.

Now that she was no longer constantly drunk or hungover, and the immediate danger has passed, her ire at the young Avatar has lessened somewhat. She was only sixteen, and her home had been invaded and attacked. Lin wasn’t sure she wouldn’t have done the same thing, had she been in the same position and it had been Republic City.

“The spirits have returned, though,” Kya continues, oblivious to Lin’s musings about Korra. Lin glances at her and sees a soft smile spread slowly across the healer’s face. “Humans and spirits, existing in the same realm for the first time in ten thousand years? It’s amazing, Lin.” 

Lin doesn’t know about that.

“Are they going to join the police force?” she asks dryly. “How about vote? Will they pay taxes?”

“Can you stop being an over-pragmatic earthbender for like two seconds?”

“Tried that once,” Lin replies, picking up her soup to sip. “Didn’t like it.”

Kya stares in disbelief at her self-deprecating joke, then exhales in exasperation and shakes her head. “A giant shake up in the spiritual energy of the planet and you’re worried about  _ taxes _ ?”

“I have a city to protect. You think the money just comes from the ether?”

“Unbelievable,” the waterbender scoffs, but Lin can tell she’s teasing. “Spirits and the city aside, how about we focus on protecting  _ you _ first?”

Lin wrinkles her nose and drinks the rest of her soup to avoid responding.

“I’m serious, Lin,” Kya says when she finally surfaces. “We need to talk about your recovery plan.”

Lin would rather die. She picks up the spoon Kya had brought for her and scrapes at the bits of tofu and kelp plastered to the side of the bowl.

“Lin.”

She looks up to find Kya staring at her intently, and she scowls back. “I have a recovery plan.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” Lin says, and sets her bowl firmly down on the tray. “Don’t drink.”

Kya rolls her eyes, hard. “I want you going to AA meetings.”

“I’m not going to AA meetings.”

“Nobody likes AA meetings,” Kya says, and her hand is on Lin’s leg again. Lin scowls and pulls out from under her touch. “I have friends who go to the ones at Wan Shi Tong’s Spirit Café. They’re low-key, non-judgmental, and everyone is very discrete.”

Lin’s scowl deepens, and she twists her hands in the sheets. “I’m not going.”

Kya frowns and tilts her head, but backs off. “You did a recovery plan with Dad, right?”

She nods.

“Good. Think about it tonight and we’ll go over how we might alter it tomorrow.” Kya sets her own bowl on the tray, then stands. “You finished for the night?”

Lin nods again, then forces herself to close her eyes and relax back onto the mattress.

“You up for visitors? The boys will probably want to see you before bed.”

“Your brothers are overbearing.”

A small smile spreads over Kya’s lips. “It’s just because they care.” She leans down and picks up the tray, tilting the folding legs up with her knee. “I’ll tell them you went to sleep. Let me take this to the kitchen and I’ll bring something to help you pass out.”

Lin nods a third time, too tired to say anything more. The dinner and conversation has taken more out of her than she had thought; walking, she thinks, is almost certainly out of the question for the evening.

She listens to the rattle of the screen on it’s track. Kya’s boots are quiet, but she can hear the scuff of the leather soles against the wood platform of the inner room.

“Kya.”

Lin opens her eyes in time to see Kya turn in the doorway and look at her expectantly.

“Hm?”

“Thank you.”

It’s as honest as she can make it, and Kya can clearly tell. She smiles, wide and beautiful, and balances the tea tray on her hip as her fingers find the door handle.

“You’re welcome.”

-/-

She walks for the first time in nine days after breakfast, leaning heavily on Kya’s shoulder as the healer helps her to the bathroom to use the facilities and shower.

Showers, for whatever reason, don’t trigger her panic attacks. Maybe it’s because the water is so far removed from the context; maybe because the water is warm; maybe because she’s naked. She hasn’t figured it out, but she isn’t complaining. She hates baths, and taking sponge baths for the rest of her life is not appealing at all. 

Kya leaves her to undress, and Lin turns on the water to heat as she does so.

She steps inside once the water is scalding and leans heavily on the stone wall, letting the water wash over her. She stands in the spray of that first shower for far longer than necessary, then slowly works shampoo through her thick hair twice to get rid of all the grease and scrubs herself down with a washcloth while seated on the bench.

She only gets out when the water starts to cool. She towels herself off then gets dressed in the clothes she had brought. It’s exhausting, taking a shower and getting dressed again, but after it’s done she feels more like herself.

There’s a rap on the door.

“You alive in there?” comes Kya’s voice.

“Yeah.”

“You decent?”

Lin rolls her eyes. Like her naked body isn’t anything Kya hasn’t seen before. It’s been awhile,sure, but there was a time long, long ago when they had all skinny dipped in the private beach at the back of the island. Back in simpler, happier times. 

“Yeah.”

Kya opens the door and bends the steam that comes billowing out of the room. She smiles as she sees Lin standing there, leaning against the lip of the sink, with damp hair and new clothes. “How are you feeling?”

Lin shrugs.

“Well if you’re up to it, there’s someone here to see you?”

She raises an eyebrow. 

“Your assistant.”

Fuck.

Hui.

The last time they had seen each other had not been pleasant, for either of them, but especially Hui. Lin had said some cruel things. Things she shouldn’t have.

She swallows. “What does she want?”

“Someone let it slip to the mainland that you were conscious, so she’s brought you some briefing reports.”

Lin’s eyebrow climbs higher. “And you’re allowing it?”

“Anything to keep you in bed,” Kya jokes. She comes over and offers Lin her arm, and Lin takes it and hobbles a few uneasy steps. “Food must be kicking in. You’re walking better already.”

Lin ignores her and focuses on getting back to her room. It’s blessedly empty. Kya helps her back into bed, then goes to get Hui from the waiting room.

When the firebender enters the room, she doesn’t meet her eye. Lin presses her lips together and tries not to feel guilty. “Hui.”

“Chief.” Her voice is cool, and she reaches into the satchel over her shoulder and pulls out a thick stack of papers. She hands them to Lin stiffly and says, “I’ve compiled a report of RCPD actions for every day since your hospitalization. The response to the vines, clean-up efforts, and notes on what has been released to the press about your…injury.”

“Thank you.”

“There are also several intelligence reports and budgetary additions, but nothing that needs your immediate attention.”

Lin nods and picks up the top report. She still doesn’t have her glasses, so she squints and holds the paper out to the extent of her reach so she has a prayer of being able to read it.

Hui watches her struggle for a second, then sighs. She dips into her satchel, then sets Lin’s spare set of reading glasses on the bed.

Lin glances at the glasses, then back at Hui, then back at the glasses. How had she known?

“I have to get back to the station,” Hui says, her voice taut. “AC Saikhan will be by tomorrow to update you on the status of the department and answer any questions you have as we prepare for your return.”

“Kya’s allowing that?”

“Yes, Chief.”

“Put it in his schedule, did you?”

“Yes…Chief.”

“Well…good.”

Lacking anything else to diffuse the tension in the room, Lin dismisses her with a tilt of her head like usual.

Something flickers across her assistant’s face—anger? Frustration?—but Lin watches as she quickly tamps whatever it is down and turns to make for the door.

Lin swears internally. She needs to patch things up with Hui. Not only does Hui have the ability to make her life a living hell when she returns to work, but she’s worked with Hui for too long, knows her tells, knows Hui is upset, and Lin knows she caused it.

Lin, contrary to popular belief, does still have a heart. And hurting those close to her is something she hates doing, especially when they did nothing to deserve it.

“Hui—“ she starts, and her assistant freezes with her hand on the screen “—wait.”

Hui pauses for a long second, then turns and looks back at her. “Yes?”

“I’m—” Lin hesitates, cringing. She fights herself to get the words out. “I’m sorry. For what I said.”

A small half-smile flickers across Hui’s face. 

“Thank you, Chief.”

“You didn’t deserve my ire,” Lin continues awkwardly. Spirits, she’s bad at this. You would think after fifty years of hurting people’s feelings, she might get better, but it almost feels like it gets harder the longer she lives. “I…appreciate you coming. Thank you.”

Hui’s features soften. “You’re welcome, Chief. And I accept your apology.”

Lin clears her throat. “Good. That’s all.”

Hui nods solemnly. “AC Saikhan will be by around four o’clock after his appointment with the president.”

“I’ll put in in my calendar,” Lin says dryly, and she’s relieved to see Hui crack a smile.

Maybe, just maybe, she hasn’t fucked everything up.

-/-

Saikhan steps through the doors of her room as she’s seated cross-legged on the bed. She’s feeling better today, her cravings managed by the detox tea, and had been able to take a short walk around the courtyard after lunch. 

Kya seems pleased with her progress, even if to her it feels insufferably slow.

“Chief?” Saikhan asks when she doesn’t acknowledge him.

“Sit, Saikhan,” is all she says, gesturing towards the chair without looking up from the briefing memo she’s annotating. It’s the last one from the stack, and she’s almost done.

Saikhan grabs the chair and pulls it up to her bedside.

She finishes her page, then holds up the memo almost mockingly. “How’s the job treating you, Acting Chief?”

He gives her a droll look. She lets her lips tug up in a half-smile at her own joke, then sets the memo aside.

“Get me up to speed,” she says, and he reaches into his bag and pulls out a sheaf of paper. She takes it and immediately starts flipping through it.

“Effective this morning, Korra’s father, Tonraq, has been installed by the Southern Council of Elders as the new Chief of the Southern Water Tribe,” Saikhan tells her as she skims the report. “Prince Desna and Princess Eska have also officially taken the Northern throne this week.”

“Jointly?” Lin asks, looking up in surprise.

“They apparently do everything together.”

“Thank the spirits there’s not a council anymore,” Lin mumbles. The two of them in the joint seat would have been a nightmare.

Saikhan grunts in agreement. “Recovery operations are underway to remove the United Forces ships that sunk in the bay, and we salvaged the remains of our downed airships yesterday.”

“Good. What else?”

“Public water service is still halted because the vines had taken over most of the waterways.”

An interesting predicament, but not necessarily her problem. 

“What else?”

Her second leans back in his chair and crosses one leg over the other. “Raiko is antsy for your return to the force and honestly, so am I. He’s just as much a slimeball as the council.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Lin shuffles the papers back into a neat stack and sets then down in front of her. “He’ll have to take it up with Kya if you want me released any time before the end of the month.”

Saikhan chuckles. “The department is happy to have you back whenever. The press is under the impression you suffered a back injury so if you don’t return for some time, they’ll understand.”

Lin sighs and caps her pen. She hates this little deception they’ve created for her; it feels like too much of a cover-up for her liking. “That is what it is. How is Mako settling into his role as detective?”

“Well enough,” Saikhan allows. “He’s already seen a case through to completion.”

“In nine days?”

“The kid’s efficient.”

“That’s good news, I suppose.” Lin sits up, looks around, then finds the memo she was searching for. She grabs it and passes it to Saikhan. “What’s this about Prince Wu being under our protection?”

“He’s officially confirmed his attendance at Republic City University,” Saikhan replies, glancing at the memo in question to make sure he was answering her question correctly. “The semester starts this week, so we’ve assigned a few officers from Special Services to guard his suite at the Four Elements while he settles his accommodations and looks for his own security.”

Lin grimaces, but says nothing. She hadn’t had the pleasure of dealing with the prince from the Earth Kingdom, but she had heard through Izumi that he was quite a handful. “I’ll want weekly reports from Special Services on his detail.”

“Of course.” Saikhan uncrosses his legs and leans forward. “Lin, when do  _ you  _ think you’ll be ready to come back?”

“I’m ready now.”

“Are you sure?” he asks uncertainly. “If you have to…take some time, it’s fine. We’ll be alright without you.”

“I’ve been away too long already,” she says gruffly, and stacks the memos Hui had brought her the day before.

“Lin—”

“I didn’t sit around on my ass feeling sorry for myself last time and I won’t do it this time,” she all but growls, violently slapping Hui’s memos over Saikhan’s briefing report. “I’m returning to the precinct as soon as I am able.”

“And AA?” Saikhan presses insistently, “Therapy? What about going to those?”

Lin thinks bitterly about the binder Kya had brought this morning and all of the avenues they had talked through for ages over breakfast. “Kya has a treatment plan.”

“One that you agree with?”

“It’s fine,” she deflects. 

He stands and returns the chair to the side. “You don’t have to do this alone, you know.”

“I’m not alone,” she says, forcing herself to look at him. Their eyes connect, and she watches as he understands. She’s never been alone, not really. Not with him as her second.

No. Not with him as her friend.

She clears her throat to keep herself from saying something she’ll regret. “Is that all, Saikhan?”

“That’s all,” he says softly, and he picks up his bag. “I have to get back to the city. Have a good night, Chief.”

“Good night, Saikhan.”

-/-

Kya finally lets Lin go home after eleven days, when she is no longer shaking and can walk across the island without passing out. She doesn’t feel completely better, and she’s still weak from not eating anything for nine days, but Kya says her aura has settled enough that as long as she doesn’t strain herself emotionally or physically for the next few weeks she should be okay.

Lin gets sent home with a binder of recovery documents, including several pages of information for local therapists and Alcoholics Anonymous groups. She doesn’t have any plans to go to therapy, or attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for that matter, but she takes the binder with her because it appeases Kya.

The city she comes back to is almost alien. There’s a giant spirit wild in the middle of the city and spirits float through the sky like escaped balloons. Half the streetcars are down or only running parts of their full routes. Satomobiles have been abandoned in the middle of the road, half-eaten by spirit vines, and entire apartment buildings are now almost uninhabitable.

Lin walks home from the tram station, and by the time she’s in the elevator of her building, she’s regretting her life choices.

She unlocks her apartment and is so exhausted from the cross-city slog that she almost misses the envelope sitting in her foyer. 

Almost, but not quite.

She frowns, tosses her keys in the bowl, and leans down to pick it up.

It’s of average size, grey, with her name written across it in familiar black script. Something shifts inside of it as she straightens, and she reaches to the sideboard for her letter opener. After slitting the top of the envelope she pulls from within it a small, metal disk and a piece of cardstock folded neatly in half.

She frowns and turns the tile over in her fingers; inscribed neatly on one side is a plant with a hollow stem, oval leaves, and a truncated base. She rubs her thumb across the carving and feels the distinct signature of metalbending.

She fumbles awkwardly for the card, flicking it open, and reads the note within.

**_Day 1: Knotweed_ **

_ Your move, Chief. _

She stares at the card with Saikhan’s untidy scrawl above Hui’s neat lettering, then flips the coin over in her hand to see the number one has been stamped into the back of the metal disc with metalbending.

They’ve given her a pai sho tile, specifically the tile that cancels harmonies and forces a new play. She turns the coin over and over in her fingers, then looks over at her coffee table.

All of Aang’s tiles are still there, lined up neatly in a harmony across the left side of the board.

She crosses the room as if in a dream, and gazes down at the thirty-two tiles gifted to her by her Uncle, even after his death. She sits on the couch, running her thumb along the edge of Saikhan and Hui’s tile as she stares at the legacy of her success and, ultimately, her failure.

She places the metal tile at the end of the harmony, then after a long moment, carefully flips all thirty-two of Aang’s tiles until the only one sitting face up is the new knotweed tile.

When it’s done, she leans her elbows on her knees and takes in the pai sho board. Eighteen years, a hundred and five days, and twenty-three hours of sobriety gone, just like that. A traumatic experience, the press of a man’s thumb to her forehead, a willing sacrifice, and a moment of weakness.

Eighteen years, a hundred and five days, and twenty-three hours of sobriety, represented in thirty-two wooden coins.

Only now there’s an extra metal coin.

Eleven days, fifteen hours, and thirty-five minutes of sobriety and counting, by her estimation.

She closes her eyes and scoffs.

Saikhan and Hui owe her a One Week coin.

She spares one last glance at the pai sho board, then stands, shucks off her coat, and moves to the kitchen to start making dinner.

That was then.

This is now.

It’s time to start again.

[End of Game 1]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of Game 1! Lin isn't ~cured~, her journey has just begun. She's got a looooong way to go still. 
> 
> As I said in the first note, I'll be taking a month or so break now that we've reached the end of Game 1 because I've written 150,000+ words since August and my brain (and my hands) need a bit of a break. 
> 
> When brave soldier girl returns for Game 2, you folks will get to see Zaofu, see a few more flashbacks that didn’t make it into Ch 1-3, and yes, Kya and Lin will FINALLY get together and YES they will kiss–multiple times if I have anything to say about it. Which I do. ;) But for now, I left you on a hopeful note, because Lin needs a bit of hope after *all of that*, now doesn't she? It's a good thing Lin has her friends to help her through. 
> 
> If you liked what you read, I always enjoy reading your thoughts. :)


	13. Zokusuji

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> zokusuji, translates as "crude line of play". A Japanese go term, referring to an unsophisticated move which achieves some simple objective but gets less out of the position than a better move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! Happy Hanukkah, my lovelies. This is an interstitial chapter between Game 1 and Game 2, set both before and after Lin's detox on Air Temple Island.
> 
> As the title might suggest, this chapter sets up Lin's questionable decision making in the first half of Game 2. Oh, Lin. When will you learn?
> 
> Enjoy! Thanks as always to Linguini for her beta skills, as well as to an Anonymous source for helping me understand how Lin's treatment process would go. :)

[Three Days Earlier]

Kya marched into her recovery room with a binder and the look of a military general.

Lin felt an immediate sinking sensation in her stomach and buried her nose in the briefing papers Hui had left her, desperately hoping if she appeared busy enough Kya would leave her be. This was, of course, a foolish supposition. Kya pulled the chair in the corner of the room over to her bedside and plopped into it, setting the binder on the bed beside her.

“So,” the healer said firmly, “what was the recovery plan you had with Dad?”

“Can’t this wait?” Lin ground out, still not looking up from the paperwork despite the fact her vision had been swimming from fatigue for the past half hour. “I’m working.”

“No, you’re hiding.”

Lin gave an exasperated sigh and dropped her papers with a loud slap into her lap. “What do you  _ want, _ Kya?”

“I want you to tell me about the recovery plan you created with my father the first time you got sober.”

Her recovery plan with Aang.

Shit.

Lin hadn’t thought about that in a long time.

Sure, Kya had told her to think about it the day before, but she’d been too wrapped up in Hui’s visit and her post-shower exhaustion to give it much thought.

She took off her reading glasses and set them on her papers. “It wasn’t exactly professional.”

“I didn’t expect it to be, considering you didn’t get help from an  _ actual _ professional,” Kya replied sardonically, picking up the stack and moving it to the side table. She opened the binder, one side whacking Lin’s knee under the covers, and pulled out a pencil. “Tell me what it was anyway.”

Lin leaned back into her pillows, closed her eyes, and tried to remember what she and Aang had discussed in his office all those years ago. “Sobriety. Weekly meetings…with him, not AA. And…the pai sho tiles.”

She heard Kya scribbling on her legal pad. “Did you go off the twelve steps?”

Lin shrugged. “We didn’t talk about that.”

“What  _ did  _ you talk about?”

-/-

They were sitting on the roof of the temple, legs dangling over the edge, brushing the sunset and mountains onto pieces of watercolor paper Aang had  carefully  mounted on boards. Lin’s feet were bare, tickled by the eddying summer breeze that ruffled her tunic and hair. She had changed after work; she always changed after work before coming to the island, and Aang had spirited her away to the top of the temple while they waited for Tenzin to return from late evening council meetings.

Lin flicked extra water off her brush so she could start dry-brushing in the details of the trees. As she did, it was with a bit more force than necessary. 

“I’m so tired of it, Aang.”

“I know.”

His words were calm, non-judgemental like always. 

She dipped her brush in their shared container of water so she could muddle the colors of the sunset reflecting against the water. “I’m a fucking Captain now. When will they see me as anything but Mom’s kid?”

“To be fair, most of that station watched you grow up.”

Her grip tightened on the paintbrush, and she took a few angry swipes at the patch of green that denoted the newly formed Republic City Park in the quickly growing city.

“You’re Toph’s daughter. Why does it make you angry?”

“Because I’m  _ not _ ,” she growled out.

Aang laughed. “If you’re not Toph’s daughter, she’s going to have some explaining to do to Katara.”

Lin scowled. “I don’t want to be hers. I don’t want to be a Beifong. I never asked for it, or all the fucking pressure that comes with it. That makes me—” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say  _ an alcoholic. _ Her hands shook so much gripping the paintbrush the water spattered, ruining the skyline _.  _ She slammed her hand into her board in frustration.  _ “Dammit!” _

Aang looked over at her and frowned. As she fumed over the ruined painting, he twisted his free hand and slowly lifted the pigment and water out of the paper.

She watched the little blob of water return to the cup, and Aang carefully blew the pigment over the edge for the wind to catch. It eddied in small dust clouds before disappearing; Lin wished her temper was so easily vanquished. 

“You were saying?” he prompted.

She wrinkled her nose. 

“Lin.”

She sighed. “No matter what I can’t get out of her shadow.”

Uncle Aang said nothing, just quietly painted his sunset.

“They won’t take me seriously,” she complained, her voice dangerously close to a whine despite being nearly thirty-three. “I’m the Captain of the metalbending unit and they treat me like a child.”

“Those that think so will retire soon enough.”

“I want them gone  _ now! _ I’m tired of the comparisons. I’m tired of the judgement.”

“You want to make a name for yourself.”

“Yes,” she said empathetically. Finally, he got it. Finally he understood.

“So I suppose the question is then,” said her uncle contemplatively, “who are you if not Toph Beifong’s daughter?”

And that was the million yuan question. Without the Beifong name, without her mother’s fame, who  _ was  _ she _?  _ The future mother of a million air babies? Hardly. Councilman Tenzin’s earthbender wife? Disgusting. The uppity female Captain who all the asshole beat cops sneered at, and made lewd comments about when they thought she couldn’t hear?

She wasn’t anybody without being connected to somebody. She wasn’t like her half-sister, who had founded an entire city before she had turned twenty-five. Lin set down her paintbrush because her hands were shaking too much.

“I guess I’m nobody.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

She looked over at him in shock. Aang smiled kindly at her. 

“Tenzin has been telling me how you’ve been redesigning the cable spools. And your method of organization used in Turtleduck Gardens is now used throughout the force.”

“But I can’t even be the first damn female Chief of Police.”

He chuckled. “No, you can’t. But let’s think of this positively. Where would you be tonight if not for here?”

She blinked at him. “...What?”

“If these fellow Captains had insulted you at this meeting but you hadn’t come here--if you’d been angry and alone, if you’d been feeling the pressure and not come here, where would you be instead?”

She squinted, trying to understand his angle. “...At home?”

“Sitting where?”

“My...couch?”

He nodded. “And eating what?”

She was struggling to see where he was going with this. “Takeout?”

“Yes. And what would you be drinking?”

That stopped her thoughts cold.

What  _ would _ she have been drinking?

Lin looked down at her painting and tried to think about it, but the truth was, she didn’t know. She hadn’t been as angry as she had been today since she’d gotten sober. It had only been a little under a year, and while her sobriety was more firmly entrenched than it had been, it was by no means absolute. Maybe she would have snapped. Maybe she would have bought a shitty beer from the take out cart, to take the edge off. 

“So if the meeting had made you angry but you hadn’t come here, you wouldn’t have come for dinner,” Aang summarized, and she nodded along slowly. “If you hadn’t come to dinner, we wouldn’t be sitting here. And we wouldn’t be painting this magnificent sunset, would we?”

She was slowly starting to understand. “No. We wouldn’t.”

He smiled at her, the kind of smile that instantly settled her nerves. The smile she trusted with her secrets and, most importantly, with her sobriety. 

“So you’re using painting to cope instead of alcohol,” he pointed out, and the smile widened into an all-out grin. “Isn’t that a marked improvement over a year ago?”

She felt her lips twitch up into a half-smile to match his candor. She supposed it was.

-/-

“Lin?” Kya prompted when she didn’t respond. “What did you and Dad talk about?”

Lin opened her eyes. Aang hadn’t been so much a sponsor as he had been half sober companion, half motivational speaker. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters,” Kya said, aghast. “I need to know what your past treatment was so we can formulate something new for you.”

“It wasn’t that sophisticated,” Lin snapped, already feeling defensive. “I read some books, I painted with him, I threw myself into work at the station.”

“…So you muscled through.”

Lin curled her legs underneath herself and didn’t respond.

From beside her, Kya let out a long, slow breath through her nose and made a note on her pad. “So I’m guessing you didn’t go to an addiction counselor or to a therapist.”

Lin scoffed. Like hell.

“Did you go to any AA at all?”

She turned her head away from Kya to stare at the wall, the grain of the bamboo suddenly fascinating.

“Lin?”

She grit her teeth. “Twice.”

“You went to AA twice?” She nodded. “And?”

She remembered the stares, the murmurs of shock, the way her anger had flared when the meeting head had made her talk. She’d gone for Aang, she’d gone  _ because _ of Aang, but she’d hated every minute of it. She didn’t need to wallow in her self-pity, and the self-pity of others, to be sober. 

She gestured dismissively. “I didn’t have time for them.”

“Well, you’re going to make time for them,” Kya told her firmly, flipping over a few pages, then popping open the rings and pulling out a piece of paper. “Meetings are important for building community and finding other alcoholics who have gone through the same things as you. You can find yourself a sponsor, a real sponsor, to help you through your struggles.”

She slid the piece of paper onto Lin’s lap and tapped it. “If you’re not going to do an AA meeting, you should at least do an outpatient group. Your addiction counselor will be able to give you referrals.”

Lin barely glanced at it. She wasn’t going to go to AA or a group of  _ any _ kind, that was a fact, but anything to get Kya off her back about it. “Fine.”

Kya’s brow furrowed. “Are you just saying that?”

“No,” she growled. 

“I’ll know if you’re lying.”

She wanted this over with. She grit her teeth and lied through them like she lied to Raiko. “I’ll go, Kya.”

“Good. That’s one down.”

Whoopie fuck.

“I really think you should be talking with a substance abuse counselor,” the healer continued in her most patient doctor voice. “The counselor will help you  _ professionally  _ break down the reasons for your self-medication, and help you work to create new coping mechanisms—”

Lin could feel the muscle in her jaw flexing. She hated when Kya talked like this. She felt like she was being patronized.

“Fine.”

“—and you should probably let your primary care provider know—or at least get something for the nightmares because—”

“I said fine, Kya,” she snapped, overriding her in her irritation. “This isn’t my first tigerdillo rodeo.”

“But it is your first time getting treated  _ properly,”  _ Kya stressed, putting the list of counselors away and flipping to a set of new pages in her binder. “You muscled through last time. It’s a miracle you were able to maintain your sobriety for eighteen years on sheer determination.”

She wrinkled her nose and looked away again.

Kya sighed. “I know you don’t like talking about your feelings, but you are going to have to start processing your trauma if you don’t want to end up here again. Or worse, on the front page of the tabloids because you get court-ordered to a ninety day rehab facility after they strip you of your badge.”

Lin’s fingers tightened in the sheets, and she studied a knot in the bamboo wall panels. It really was a fascinating grass. In some parts of the Earth Kingdom it grew up to a foot wide. Fire Nation engineers were trying to use that extra-large bamboo to make boards for construction. Lin didn’t think they had a monkey-lemur’s chance in hell of making something that could support weight, but people had had stranger ideas. 

She heard the binder snap open again, and then Kya slid another piece of paper into her lap. 

“This is a list of substance abuse counselors in the city that specialize in alcoholism in first responders and military personnel. They’ll be able to help you in ways a normal substance abuse counselor might not. They’ll also help you process your PTSD and other trauma-related stressors, as well as ones that deal with stressors like family.”

Lin finally turned back, but only to glare at Kya. “What are you trying to say?”

Kya gave her a look and continued on, tapping the first list with a finger. “Bumi recommended Giang personally. He said lots of people from the UF went to xem for overreliance on alcohol.” Her hand shifted to the second list. “I know a couple of people on this therapist list, they cycled through my practice for clinical. Xing Wang is great. But you’re free to choose your own, or do your own research.”

Lin closed her eyes again. She didn’t want to go to therapy, didn’t want to talk to random strangers about her  _ feelings _ . She had barely been able to talk to Aang about her feelings, and he’d been the man who put her through detox and acted as her guide through her crash-course in sobriety. If she hadn’t been able to open up to him, let alone  _ Tenzin _ , who had been her fucking  _ boyfriend  _ at the time, a stranger didn’t stand a chance. 

“Do you need me to choose and make the calls for you?” Kya asked.

“I’ll do it,” Lin snapped immediately.

“Good,” said her healer happily. “Once you’re walking again, we’ll get you into the phone room so you can start calling to see who has availability.”

“Do I have a choice about any of this?”

“You get to choose your meeting sites and your treatment team.”

Not any of which she wanted.

“I want you to go to counseling at least once a week, and most likely your clinical group will be three times a week for several months,” Kya told her, writing it all down in big, blocky letters. Lin opened her mouth to object, but Kya overrode her. “I don’t want to hear it. I know you’re busy, I know you’re the Chief, but I don’t care. And if you want to get better, if you don’t want to end up in my healing pool again, you’ll do as I say.”

“I—”

“I’m sure Hui will be more than happy to put it all into your schedule so you  _ have the time _ , Lin.”

At the mention of her assistant, Lin fell quiet. She watched Kya glance at her, then go back to scribbling.

“I’m going to switch you from páidú chá to kěwàng chá as soon as I’m sure you’re clear from this detox,” the healer said, flipping to yet another page in her binder and continuing to write. “Kěwàng chá is a medicinal tea that’s similar to what you’ve been drinking—páidú chá—but it tastes a little bit better. It’s also specifically made for the cravings, unlike páidú chá which only does that incidentally.”

That Lin paid attention to. “You mean it won’t taste like the inside of a meat market seaweed barrel?”

“Now I didn’t say that,” Kya teased, but it was with a smile. “My patients have said it tastes more like seaweed and less like meat market.”

“Thank Agni,” Lin grumbled sarcastically.

“It’s still gross. It’s not anybody’s favorite tea.”

“Wonderful.”

Kya smiled, and Lin thought it was unfair of her to smile like that while prescribing her to a lifetime of hell. “I’ll take you to Moons and show you how to order it. They are still the best apothecary in the city, and are where I buy all my herbs and teas when I’m in town.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have them stocked.”

“A girl runs out,” Kya said, mock coyly.

Lin rolled her eyes. “Anything else you intend to torture me with?”

“We’ll need to create a rough list of your triggers and some self-care strategies for you, along with some rough goals to shoot for, for between when you leave my care and enter the care of a counselor,” Kya replied, but instead of turning a page, she closed her notebook with a small smile. “But I think you’ve had enough for now.”

If a spirit had floated into the room at that very moment, Lin might have been moved enough to kiss it. Or, at the very least, not grab it and throw it back from whence it came.

“I’m going to leave the lists and some of their pamphlets and literature with you to review on your own time.” Kya stood and stretched her back; Lin heard her vertebrae pop back into alignment, and the healer groaned in satisfaction. “Sound good?”

She nodded. 

“Let me go grab you some breakfast from the kitchens, okay? And after, we can go for a little walk around the garden.”

For now, Lin was safe from any more. She just wanted this to be over, to get back to work, to forget this lapse in her judgment and her sobriety had ever happened. “That’s fine.”

“Good,” Kya said with a soft little smile. “I’ll be back in just a second.”

* * *

[Present Day]

Lin is halfway through her Sunday paper when there is a knock on her apartment door. She frowns and taps her foot against the floor; the shockwaves radiate through her apartment, and she slowly puts together a picture of the person disturbing her morning.

A single person, female, non-threatening stance.

Only a few people she knows meet that description, and none of them work for her building. She stands warily, and only takes a step or two forward before a familiar voice calls through the door,

“I know you’re in there, Lin. Don’t make me pick this lock.”

Kya.

Lin relaxes slightly and drifts to the door, throwing the platinum deadbolt and chain open. She pulls the door open and leans on it with a frown. “What?”

“Good morning to you, too,” Kya says cheerfully. She’s looking well rested for the first time in days, like Lin being out of the healing hut and at home let her sleep deeply through the night. “I told you I’d come see you in the morning for a follow up, remember?”

Lin sighs. She’s been too distracted by her own night of poor sleep and being back in her apartment with all of its bad memories to remember. She shifts and opens the door wider, letting Kya and her medical bag inside.

“How was the night?” Kya asks, glancing around.

Lin shrugs. Kya doesn’t need to know. If she did, all she would do is hover, and she’s had enough of Bumi, Kya, and Tenzin hovering over the past few days to last a lifetime.

“Where do you want me?” she asks instead.

“Couch should be fine.”

Lin sits and Kya sits beside her, pulling water from her flask and starting to take her vitals. Lin holds still as Kya listens to her breathing, her heat rate, and matches her pulse against her small timepiece.

“Well, your qi is still a bit mixed, but that’s to be expected,” Kya says finally, pulling back and dropping the watch back into her bag. “It won’t settle fully for another few weeks, and that’s  _ if _ nothing stressful happens between now and then.”

Lin arches an eyebrow sarcastically. “You do know what my job is right?”

Kya laughs. “Oh, trust me, Chief, I’m well aware.”

“And yet you are clearing me for work?”

“I know you, Lin,” Kya says, bending the water away and instead moving in to gently palpate Lin’s neck and jawline. Her fingers are cool against her skin, the pressure firm and expertly applied. “I weighed the risks.”

“Did you now?”

“I did. You need the distraction and the purpose, and I trust Saikhan and Hui to keep you in line.”

“Thank you for that,” says Lin sarcastically, but she’d been a fool to think that Saikhan and Hui wouldn’t be watching her every move upon her return. She’s still angry with their initial deception, but she can’t blame them in the slightest.

“You’re welcome.” Kya pulls away and peers at her intently. “How were your cravings now that you’re home?”

Lin swallows. Bad. They had been bad. Even with the tea, being back in this apartment, where she had spiraled and drunk herself to blackout almost every night there at the end, had been harder than she had anticipated. “I managed them.”

“How?”

She nods at her drying cabinet, where her sad attempts at watercolors are hanging from where she had put them up to dry the night before.

Her healer looks delighted. “You’re painting again!”

“Badly.”

“I don’t think that’s true. Now, did you get your appointment schedule to Hui?”

Lin thinks only marginally guiltily of the fake appointments she had called about, told Kya she had set up to get her off her back. She won’t be going to therapy. She didn’t need it the first time, she doesn’t need it now.

“I did,” she lies.

“Good. When is your first one?”

“Wednesday.”

Kya nods happily, leaning down to pack up her healer kit. “Good. Now get dressed, I’m showing you Moons.”

Lin gives her a baleful stare. “I know where Moons is.”

“Maybe you do, but we’re going and getting you some kěwàng chá.”

“And why are you required to go with me?”

“Because I need to see you actually buy it.” Kya nudges her foot reproachfully. “And I’ve got some tricks to make it taste not-awful. So c’mon, go put some clothes on.”

Lin considers for a moment if she could make a break for it out of her bedroom windows, but she knows Kya would find her. “Fine. Give me fifteen minutes.”

The waterbender winks at her, something that makes Lin feel uneasy for reasons she can’t explain. “I’ll look at your paintings while I wait.”

Lin rolls her eyes, but heaves herself up from her couch and goes to her bedroom to get dressed. She pulls on slacks and one of her nicer and only non-work shirts, which she fastens carefully up the side after pulling her hair out of the collar. She pads to the bathroom to put her hair to rights. Kya is in her drying cabinet, inspecting Lin’s paintings, and Lin leaves the door to the bathroom open to keep an eye on her.

“You know,” Kya comments as Lin pulls a comb through her hair to quell the worst of the snags, “I haven’t seen you out of your uniform and in actual clothes in ages.”

Lin knows she’s right. Beyond her detox on Air Temple Island it has, actually, been literal years. She doesn’t respond, though, just twists her mass of hair at the base of her neck and shoves in hairpins. As she leaves the bathroom and passes her dining table, she grabs her teapot and cup and dumps the remaining contents down the sink.

“Ready to go?”

She grunts and sits on her bench seat to pull on her brogues. It feels like she rarely wears them anymore, and she savors the bite of the strings against her fingers as she pulls the laces tight. When she stands, she reaches out a hand and her wallet zips across the room from where she’d left it atop her radio the night before.

Kya smiles good naturedly. “Show off.”

“Metal on the clasp.” Lin shows her, then slips it into her pocket and picks her keys up out of the bowl. “Let’s get this over with.”

Kya’s smile grows, and she slips out the door after Lin. The streets of Republic City bustle with people going about their daily business. Men and women with arms full of groceries from the market, families clasping the hands of small children as they move about downtown, workers on the weekend shift coming and going.

“Did you get that silver sobriety chip at the Spirit Café?” Kya asks as they walk. “The one on Dad’s pai sho board.”

Lin presses her lips together and stuffs her hands into the pockets of her slacks, but doesn’t elaborate.

“Who gave it to you? Bumi? Tenzin?”

She shakes her head.

“Then process of elimination says it was either Saikhan or Hui then.”

Lin sighs. 

“Well?”

She gives in. “Both.”

“That was sweet of them,” Kya says, her voice more gentle. “They really care about you Lin.”

“So I’m told.”

She takes a right off the main drag, through the twisted city streets, the back way into Little Harbor City, where Moons is nestled under a low-rise next to a canal. She wishes Kya would stop prying. She helped her detox, yes, but that’s done now. She’s been released, is back at home, and just wants to get back to her life. She wants to piece back together her self-esteem and her job and her relationship with her assistant and Assistant Chief in peace, without Kya’s constant supervision.

Sure, she’ll buy the damn tea, because she  _ does _ actually want to stay sober, but she won’t be happy about it. The last time she got sober, the cravings were awful—and this time, she can’t exactly go hide in Tenzin’s bed.

Still, she doesn’t need an escort.

“I can buy it without you holding my hand,” Lin growls as they come to a stop outside of Moons.

“I know,” Kya comments mildly, already pushing through the front door, “but I haven’t seen Aput in ages.”

Lin bites back a snarl and follows her inside. Moons is a tight little store, old, with wooden windows with shoji screen shutters and an air of dust. The shells are stacked from floor to ceiling with shelves of herbs and tea and dried plants, and Kya greets the teenager behind the counter with a hug.

“Nukilik! You’ve gotten so big. How are you?”

Lin ignores the chatter and focuses on the jars of tea. They are huge, full of loose leaves and other things she can’t recognize. She can read the labels, but has absolutely no idea what any of it means. She doesn’t have time to dwell on it, though, because a woman, slightly older than Kya, comes out of the back and greets Kya with abandon.

Kya hugs her tightly, then turns and finds where Lin’s gotten off to.

“Lin,” Kya says with a crook of her finger, “come here.”

She comes.

“Aput, this is Lin,” Kya says, and Lin looks at the woman. She’s about her height, with dark brown hair and kind brown eyes. “Aput is the owner of Moons. Took over from her mom—”

“Who took over from her mom,” Aput says with a wry smile. “How can I help the two of you today?”

The waterbender leans easily on the counter, arms folded over each other, and says, “Lin needs a quarter pound of kěwàng chá, and if her counselor agrees with the prescription, she’ll need about a pound a month.”

Lin feels hot shame flare into her cheeks at her medical needs being discussed so openly, but Aput nods business-like and pulls a receipt book out of a drawer in the counter. “We can do that. At the usual dosage rate?”

Kya nods, her silver hair swinging side to side down the back of her dress.

Lin wants to die.

Aput scribbles a note on her receipt pad and turns to Lin. “At that dosage, a quarter pound will last you about a week. Would you like to leave a phone number or address for us to leave a reminder message?”

“That won’t be necessary,” she says stiffly.

“Alright. Nukilik, if you could—?” The boy is already disappearing into the back, presumably to fetch a packet of tea. “Will that be it?”

Kya nods again, so Aput tears the receipt off and hands it to Lin. “Two hundred even.”

The price is steep, far steeper than her usual tea habit, but it isn’t as if Lin can’t afford it. She pulls out her wallet and undoes the clasp, handing over the proper bills just as Nukilik comes trotting back in a small bag. He wraps it in brown paper as Aput counts out Lin’s change from the till.

“One quarter pound of kěwàng chá.”

“Thanks, Aput,” Kya says, and leans over to buzz the apothecary’s cheek with a friendly kiss. “I’ll try to hit you up again before I skip town.”

“You should come for dinner,” Aput says with a smile, and then gives Lin a meaningful glance.

Lin can’t interpret it, too caught up on Kya’s phrasing, but it makes Kya roll her eyes.

“ _ Don’t,”  _ she warns Aput playfully.

“What?” Aput asks innocently.

“We have to go. Ring me on the island and we’ll figure it out?”

Aput’s smile widens.

Kya straightens up and tugs on her arm. “C’mon, Lin.”

Lin, mystified and still a bit ashamed, tucks the brown paper package into her pockets along with her wallet, and slinks out of Moons.

Kya is taller than her, but Lin is a faster walker, so she quickly catches up to her and falls into step alongside. Kya is quiet, smiling softly to herself as she watches the goings on of the city around her, and Lin appreciates it.

But her comment back in the apothecary bugs her. It sounded to Lin like Kya is planning on leaving the city soon.

“What did you mean when you told Aput you would be skipping town?” Lin finally asks as they turn to walk along High Street, on the final stretch back to her apartment building. “Are you going back to the South Pole?”

“Eventually,” responds Kya easily. “I need to get back to my practice and check in on Mom. Once I’m sure you’re settled, I’ll probably head home.”

Lin feels something tug at her stomach. She doesn’t want Kya to leave—she knows it is inevitable, but having Kya in Republic City for the first time in a decade has been wonderful. Even if she had spent the majority of the time saving the world and then hauling Lin’s ass out of relapse.

Lin has always enjoyed when Kya blows into the city, and this time has been no exception. She just wishes it had been under better circumstances.

“I… see…”

“It won’t be for another few weeks,” the healer says hastily, taking in the look on her face. “You’re a day out of my healing suite. I’m not leaving until you’ve gotten in a few good sessions with your recovery team, Saikhan and Hui give you that month chip, or your aura isn’t red anymore. Whichever comes first.”

Lin stares at her, because what else can she do?

“Hopefully we can do a few things that aren’t recovery related, too.”

Lin glances at their fellow passersby warily, but nobody seems to be paying them any attention. Still, “Will you quit talking about it in public?”

Kya gives her an apologetic smile. “Alright. Let’s talk about something else?”

“Do you have to?” Lin grouses.

The waterbender bumps her shoulder playfully against hers. “How about work? You ready to go back tomorrow?”

Lin considers the question. She doesn’t want to deal with Raiko, who will undoubtedly bluster about her absence, or the departmental gossip that will likely swirl around her return, but she’s ready to go back. She needs her schedule back, the fast-paced staccato of meetings and field visits, of losing herself in paperwork and planning. She needs to hear the chatter of the typing pool and the secretaries, however inane it might be, and the sound of her AC’s boots clipping across the floor on their ways in and out. She needs the soft sunshine of her north-facing windows, the cool creak of her leather office chair, and the skitter of her favorite pen over her planner pages as she takes notes.

She needs to go back home. Her real home, not her apartment; she needs to be back in Headquarters.

So she nods her affirmation, and Kya smiles. “I’m glad.”

Lin can tell it’s sincere.

“You’ll be picking up the pieces of the city, of course, but that shouldn’t be too hard for you,” Kya teases.

“No pressure.”

“No pressure,” Kya agrees, then slips her arm through Lin’s. Lin is startled by the contact, and glances over at her in alarm. Kya rubs her arm soothingly. “Just me, Beifong.”

Lin swallows. “Just you.”

“Mmhmm,” Kya hums, and turns her attention back to the street ahead of them. She dodges pedestrians with ease, her arm never wavering from its position looped around Lin’s. “And I want you to know I’m here for you. Not just as your healer, okay? All of us are. Bumi, Tenzin, me. Saikhan and Hui, too. It’s going to be rough, but no matter what, you can lean on us.”

The thought of leaning on anyone, after the amount of work they’ve done the past two weeks to keep her secrets, makes her sick. She never, ever, wants to have to do this ever, ever again. Opening up this much has left her raw, like a crab without a shell, and she just wants to build up her walls and get back to the way things were.

But she knows Kya wouldn’t approve, just like she wouldn’t approve of the fact Lin isn’t going to go to AA, or the fact she hasn’t actually made her therapy appointments like she’s supposed to. So she keeps her opinions to herself, and instead lets Kya steer her happily back to her apartment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked what you read, please consider leaving a review. :) More to come in 2021!


	14. Game 2: Jasmine (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin's first day back is a Spirit damned nightmare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little salami, as a treat. Happy Christmas to those who celebrate, and Happy Kwanza too. My gift to you :)
> 
> As always, I'm indebted to Pasta for her amazing beta skills.

Lin's first day back is a Spirit damned nightmare.

If she believed in a higher power, she would have thought they, or even the Universe, was fucking with her. She hasn't been back in the office for twenty minutes when Hui knocks on the door.

"Detective Mako to see you, Chief."

Lin glances down at her schedule; she has barely forty five minutes before she has to be at City Hall for a press conference. "Is it important?"

"Yes, Chief."

She sighs. "Show him in."

Mako comes in; he's dressed in his detective uniform but he's smudged to hell. It looks like he slept in a gutter. Lin had heard through the grapevine he'd been sleeping at the station instead of going home or staying on Air Temple Island, but his dishevelment isn't caused by sleeping under his desk. No, it looks like he's been attacked.

"What is it, Mako?"

Mako looks around, then closes the door behind him. "You're not going to believe this."

She raises an eyebrow.

He shuffles on his feet, not meeting her gaze.

"Tenzin hasn't had any other kids, has he?" He asks awkwardly, not meeting her gaze. "Kya? Bumi?"

Lin narrows her eyes. "Of course not. Why do you ask?"

"I responded to a domestic disturbance last night. A shop was wrecked, and the keeper said it was by his brother. Said things were flying around and then--when I went to confront him, he airbent a door into my face and then got away using air blasts."

Lin's eyebrow climbs higher. This sounds more like a tale out of his brother, or one of the guys downstairs. She wonders if someone put him up to it. 

“Humor doesn't suit you, Mako."

"It's not a joke, Chief!" He's more earnest than she's ever seen him. "I saw it with my own eyes!"

Lin studies his face, the eagerness in his eyes, and sighs. "Airbending?”

“Yes, Chief.”

Weirder shit has happened in the past month. Namely the giant dark Avatar that fought Korra’s spirit in the harbor and then covered the city in vines. Honestly, why shouldn’t there be new airbenders now? It would be significantly on brand.

She massages the growing headache in her left temple and leans back in her chair. “What else do you know?"

"Not much,” he admits sheepishly. “I'm running out of leads, which is why I asked to see you."

"And you think I'd know?"

"With all due respect, Chief, you've known Kya, Tenzin, and Bumi longer than I've been alive. And I don't exactly want to ask Tenzin if he has any illegitimate children while he's letting my brother live rent free on Air Temple Island."

Lin scoffs. “Tenzin would never cheat on Pema. He’s the squarest nerd to ever exist.”

Mako hesitates. “Uh…Chief. This new airbender is almost thirty.”

Lin rolls her eyes at his insinuation. “No.”

“But—”

“He never cheated on me,” Lin growls out, already done with this line of questioning. She tamps down the simmering anger; Mako doesn’t deserve it, especially not after what she’s already put him through. “He never cheated, not even with Pema. You can’t believe everything you read in the gossip rags.”

Mako swallows nervously and wisely moves on. “Kya—”

“Is a lesbian.”

“I…see.” Mako pulls out his little notebook and starts scribbling. “And…and Bumi?”

“You’ll have to ask him,” she replies dryly. “There’s no telling what he got up to on shore leave. You might start with asking Hui.”

She nods to where Hui is in her connecting office, calmly and efficiently typing something up at her typewriter. Mako looks incredulously between her and his fellow firebender. “You, uh…you got it, Chief.”

She forgets he’s new enough to the force he probably doesn’t know Hui used to work for Bumi, which should prove entertaining at the very least. “We’ll go talk to him after the press conference. Let Hui know to make the change to my schedule.”

.

.

.

The press briefing is a disaster. Saikhan had said Raiko had been down Korra’s throat trying to force the blame squarely onto her shoulders, so when she has to force them apart, it isn’t a surprise. Lin supposes she should feel bad for the kid, but she honestly has bigger fish to fry right now.

Like getting through today without murdering someone or, worse, relapsing.

She’s not craving yet, which was a good thing. Instead, she just has a headache.

She chases her afternoon shot of  kěwàng chá with two willowbark tablets and a cup of longjing. The  kěwàng chá is miserable, no matter what Kya promised her. But she’s not shaking, so that’s something. 

Hui knocks on the connecting door of her office and pops her head in. “Mako’s here, Chief. Your schedule is clear until three.”

“Thank you, Hui.”

She pushes off from where she is leaning against her desk, leaves her cup on her desk, and steps out of her office. Mako is waiting awkwardly by the typing pool. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, clearly nervous.

“Chief!” Hui says from her office, and tosses a foil package to Lin when she turns around.

She catches it with one hand, feels the sandwich squish gently under her fingers, and rolls her eyes.  Would Hui  _ ever  _ stop trying to feed her?

“Eat it, Chief,” her assistant says sternly.

Lin rolls her eyes again and turns to Mako. “Let’s go, kid.”

They ride the elevator down to the lobby, get the keys from the motor pool, and head for the parking lot.

“You eaten lunch yet?” she asks as they get into her car. Mako shakes his head. She tosses the sandwich into his lap. “Help yourself.”

Mako pales a little. “But Hui—”

“What Hui doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” she says as she starts the engine and pulls out of her spot. When he still hesitates, she growls, “Eat the damn sandwich.”

“Yes, Chief.”

They join midday traffic going downtown, and Mako tears into the tin foil to bite off a corner of the sandwich. They sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic, and she glances over at him as she drums her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. He clearly hasn’t been eating much, because the way he’s devouring the sandwich is not the way normal people eat.

Not to mention he seems skittish around her, which is new.

She restrains a sigh.

She still hadn’t apologized to him—for snapping at him, for belittling him in the interrogation room, for throwing him in jail without doing more investigating. He’s still just a kid, barely nineteen, but he’s already had to deal with more things than Lin had before she made Captain.

The silence is the car is oppressive, and she’s generally a big fan of silence. By the way they’re moving they are going to be in this vehicle for some time, and she should apologize here while they are alone. Lin is trying to figure out how to phrase it, how to screw up the courage to swallow her pride in order to apologize to a kid, a  _ rookie  _ thirty years younger than her, when he beats her to the punch.

“So, uh, Chief.”

She grunts.

“You’re back earlier than expected,” he starts hesitantly, clearly testing the waters, watching for the quick-to-flare rage that characterized her behavior for months while she was drinking again. “From sick leave. Chief, are you—”

“I’m fine.” She really isn’t, but maybe one day she will be. Speaking of… She pauses, glances over at him, then sighs. No time like the present. “I owe you an apology, Mako.”

She sees him look at her in confusion. “Chief?”

“I read your report on the Chiang case,” she tells him as the Satomobile inches towards the intersection. “You did good work.”

He stiffens, nods, and looks away.

“I was…wrong to not have listened to you,” she continues, almost pained, “after the bombing. I should have.”

“It’s okay,” he says softly, not looking at her. “You were under a lot of stress from President Raiko and I…I should have stuck to my beat.”

“No, you did the right thing,” she corrects forcefully, wanting,  _ needing _ to impress upon him the fact that she was the wrongful party. He should never have taken the blame, and had she been sober or in less of a state at the time, it never would have gotten that far. “You showed good initiative, following up and following through on your hunch when others ignored you.”

“Thanks…”

“What I said at the station that night was true. You’re going to make a great detective.” She pauses again, then gives him a wry little half smile. “Although some advice from a seasoned veteran?”

There is curiosity in his golden eyes. Ah, youth. “Yeah?”

“Leave the Triads out of it. If the papers get wind of it next time, they won’t be as kind to you.”

It takes them a further thirty minutes to get to the docks, where they catch the ferry to Air Temple Island. They don’t have to go far to find Bumi; as they walk towards the family residence they find Bumi standing in the courtyard, thrusting his fists into the air, looking for all the world like he was fighting something. 

“Invisible spirit monster attack?” Lin asks Tenzin dryly as she watches the back of Kya’s head disappear back into the residence. Secretly, she’s glad. She knew Kya would nag her about meetings, or therapy, or how she was feeling, if she had stayed.

Tenzin’s eyes light up as he speaks. “Lin, you won’t believe this. Bumi just started airbending!”

Lin glances at Mako, exchanging a shocked expression with him. Mako’s theory of airbender blood was either massively correct, or massively off base. It was too early to tell which was which. 

“I’m afraid he’s not the only one.”

_ “What?” _

Korra, Asami, and Tenzin’s shocked chorus confirms her suspicions; the police are the only ones who know about this new airbender.

“I got a call last night about a guy who just started airbending out of nowhere,” Mako told them.

“You mean there’s another one?” Lin recognizes that tone in Tenzin’s voice; it was the tone he used to get about old Air Nomad artifacts, trips to the temples with his father, and how he had spoken the day he learned a fully intact set of airbending gates had been found in a private collection and were being donated to the Air Nation. She can see dawning excitement in his grey eyes as he asks, “Where is he now?”

Mako scratches his cheek sheepishly. “He, uh, blew a door down on me and got away.”

Lin lets him talk—awkwardly, so painfully awkwardly, which serves him right—with his two ex-girlfriends and turns to Bumi. “I need to speak with you.”

He nods and tilts his head towards the temple. Lin leaves Mako to it and walks with Bumi under the portico, her boots clipping against the stone. They step into an antechamber in the basement of the temple and she crosses her arms over her chest as soon as the doors close.

“What’s up, Lin?”

“I’m going to be blunt, Bumi,” she says, leaning back against the cool stone wall of the wall. “This new airbender. He yours?”

Bumi chokes in surprise. “What?! No.”

Lin quirks an eyebrow.

“He’s not!” Bumi says seriously. “At least, I don’t think so. I always use protection.”

Lin’s eyebrow climbs higher.

“I swear!”

She rolls her eyes and pushes off the wall. “I believe you. Mako had a hunch.”

“Well they can’t all be winners,” Bumi chortles. “Tenzin and Korra think it might be because I was in the spirit world during Harmonic Convergence.”

“You think some random shopkeeper from Republic City found his way into the spirit world during Harmonic Convergence?”

Bumi shrugs. “I didn’t say it was a  _ good _ theory.”

Lin’s arms tighten across her chest and she presses her lips together. They are no closer to finding out the answer of how this shopkeeper, Daw, and now apparently Bumi, have suddenly, miraculously, come up with the ability to airbend. At least with Bumi it makes some semblance of sense. With Daw, she doesn’t have a clue.

“What  _ do _ you think is happening?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly.

Lin presses her lips together. Dammit. She would have thought master strategist Bumi would have thought of  _ something.  _ But then, he’s probably still reeling from suddenly developing airbending at  _ sixty years old. _

“How are you holding up?” Bumi asks suddenly, like he’s desperate to change the subject.

She squints at him. “You’re already thinking like an airbender.”

He rolls his eyes.

She rolls her own back but doesn’t press. She’s not good with emotions, and she’s already expended most of her energy today apologizing to Mako. She’ll leave Bumi’s  _ feelings _ to Kya. “Have you talked to your mother yet?”

He gives a small little smile and tucks his hands into his pockets. “Yeah.”

“And?”

“She’s happy,” he says slowly, like he is trying to choose his words carefully, “but disappointed, I think.”

Lin furrows her brow in confusion. “Why would she be disappointed?”

He shrugs. “Oh, you know. Made it my entire life as a non-bender, now I suddenly have airbending? She probably thinks I’m taking away from Uncle Sokka’s legacy.”

“That’s ostrich-horse shit.”

Bumi sighs and leans back against the opposite wall. “Think it still counts as continuing his legacy if I still look like him more than her anyway?”

There’s sadness in his voice, but also something close to bitterness. It’s a side to Bumi—jovial, happy-go-lucky, genial Bumi—that she often forgets exist. She knows he’d built an entire career, an entire life, and entire existence twisting the fact that he, the eldest child of Avatar Aang, hadn’t been an airbender. He’s learned to fight, to lead, to strategize, and rose through the ranks of the United Forces because of it. Hell, she’d hired him to help the RCPD because of it.

She thought he had gotten over his pain and hurt with age and experience. But now it seems like the insecurity rearing its ugly head again. Or maybe it’s the fact that  _ his _ identity,  _ his  _ legacy, has just been destroyed by a simple, cruel twist of the Universe.

Lin watches him frown and she realizes the emotions she had been trying to avoid are here anyway. Spirits. She never should have asked after Katara…but at least dealing with Bumi’s problems means she can forget her own for a little bit.

“You don’t look like Uncle Sokka,” she says as gently as she can, which comes out as a stern, gruff statement of fact. “You look like Uncle Aang.”

Bumi looks up at her in shock. “You think so?”

She nods, and pushes off the wall just as Mako raps on it.

“Chief?” he calls through the door. “You ready to go?”

Saved by the rookie.

“Good luck,” she tells Bumi as sincerely as possible, then pushes the door open and jerks her head back towards the city. “Let’s go, Mako. We have an airbender to find.”

.

.

.

The day goes quickly downhill from there. Between having to conduct an emergency evacuation of a residential apartment building because  _ someone  _ almost destroyed it with spirit vines, and then trying to stop the new airbender from jumping from the top of Kyoshi Bridge, her hands are itching for a bottle as she makes her way back to the station. She’s also got a massive headache, and as soon as she gets back to her office she slams two willowbark tablets down dry before throwing herself heavily into her desk chair.

It’s well past time to go home, but catching up on the massive amount of paperwork that has been backlogged over the day will keep her distracted. Most importantly, it will keep her in the station and away from temptation.

Spirits, does she want a shot of baijiu.

There’s a knock on her office door; she glances at the clock on her desk, then over at Hui’s office. It’s almost eight o’clock, and Hui is long gone for the day. She sighs and massages her temple. “What?”

It’s Saikhan who steps into her office; he looks harried, which isn’t much different than usual. He closes the door behind her and looks her up and down, then around the room as if expecting to see a bottle of baijiu stuffed in her trash can or a shot glass hurried hidden under a tea cup.

It makes her hackles rise, but she can’t blame him. She’d look, too.

“Chief,” he finally says, voice carefully neutral.

“Saikhan.”

“We aren’t actually going to enforce Raiko’s banishment of the Avatar from Republic City,” he asks, coming over to stand at her desk. “Are we?”

“You’re welcome to try.” A pause. “We did catch her the first time around.”

A smile tugs at Saikhan’s normally seriously-set mouth. “I don’t think we’ll be able to catch her by surprise this time.”

“Probably not,” she agrees with a similar amount of humor.

“So I shouldn’t put out an APB for her immediate arrest if she’s spotted within the city limits?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.”

He smiles, then pauses before asking, “How are you holding up?”

What  _ is  _ it with people asking her that question today? 

“I’m fine.”

He doesn’t look convinced. “You need to spar or anything?”

“What I  _ need _ is for you to get out of my office so I can get to this paperwork.”

He sighs, but reaches into his belt pouch and pulls out something small and metal, which he tosses at her. She catches it, and looks down; it’s a small metal coin, the same size as a pai sho tile, with a stylized jasmine flower stamped into one side and the number one stamped on the other.

“Hui said you said we owed you.”

“Four days late,” she says, but buffs her thumb across the coin anyway.

“I’ll make sure you get your two week one on time,” he deadpans, and she rolls her eyes. “If you’re here for the night, I’m going home. Call me if anything comes up. Good luck on the paperwork.”

She nods, and sets the coin to the side on her desk. When she says nothing further, he tells her to have a good night and slips quietly from her office. She waits a few minutes, then slides off the sole of her boot and slams her heel into the floor.

Lin tracks him back to his office, then a few seconds later feels him put on his coat and leave for the evening.

The fact he didn’t hang around to spy on her shocks her.

‘Maybe they do actually still trust me somewhat,’ she thinks wryly as she pulls the closest file towards her and fishes about in her top drawer for her reading glasses. It’s  _ almost _ an encouraging thought.

.

.

.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Lin startles and glances up from her intelligence report, over her glasses and at the familiar waterbender standing in the doorway of her office. It was late, and she had been so engrossed in her paperwork she hadn’t heard Kya come in.

“Kya,” she says in surprise, “what are you doing here?”

“Needed to go for a walk to clear my head,” she tells her with a smile, coming fully into her office and closing the door behind her. “Besides, I owe you an invoice.”

Lin blinks and glances at her clock. It’s almost eleven in the evening. “So you thought you’d deliver it to the police station at this time of night?”

“After the day you’ve had? I knew you’d be here.”

Lin grimaces and leans back in her chair, holding her hand out. Kya reaches into her wide belt and pulls out a folded piece of paper, which she hands over.

Lin flicks it open and observes the damage. Ten thousand yuans for time and materials, neatly itemized by day and type, plus an extra five thousand for damages. She grimaces as she thinks of the damage she had done to the middle exam room in the Air Temple Island healing hut. She had fixed what she could, but the floors and screens undoubtedly had had to be replaced.

Wordlessly she reaches into her desk, pulls out her personal checkbook, and writes a check for twenty thousand. There were perks to being a Beifong, and not even blinking at writing a twenty thousand yuan check was one of them.

She tears the check from the book and holds it out between two fingers. “Here.”

“Well that was easy. Thanks.” Kya takes it, then glances at it before she tucks it away; her eyes pop. “ _ Lin!”  _ She’s scandalized, which is cute. “This is—it was fifteen thousand, not—”

“I know,” Lin interrupts her, and shoves her drawer closed. “Keep it. Or donate it, I don’t care.”

“But—”

“Consider it your tip.”

Kya stares at her, then slowly tucks the check into her belt. “…Thanks.”

To her annoyance, Kya doesn’t go away. Instead she takes a seat in one of the chairs in front of her desk. Lin wrinkles her nose in displeasure and picks up her intelligence report again and starts to read.

Kya sits quietly for a few moments, watching her read, before asking. “How are you holding up?”

Lin slaps the report down on her desk in exasperation. “ _ Why _ is everyone asking me that?”

“Because it’s a legitimate question?” Kya retorts. “Because you’re a recovering alcoholic two days out of detox and you came back to probably the most stressful day at the police station you could have had?”

Hui and Saikhan’s interrogation of her post-sea prune wine definitely tops the day she’s had today, but Lin keeps her mouth shut about that.

“I’m fine.”

“If you were fine you wouldn’t be here at eleven o’clock, nose deep in paperwork.”

Lin scowls. “What do you want me to say?”

“It’s okay to be craving alcohol,” Kya says gently.

“I’m an alcoholic,” she practically snaps, “of course I’m craving alcohol.”

The healer looks at her for a long while, so long that Lin almost squirms, then asks simply, “You hungry?”

Lin’s stomach twists painfully at the mention of food. She hasn’t eaten since breakfast, which had just been her usual breakfast sandwich from a vendor on her way into work and her usual cups of tea from Hui.

Kya obviously can tell, because she smiles and stands up. “Come on. Narook’s closes at one and I’ve been craving squid ink noodles since we landed on Air Temple Island. Besides, I think we both need the company tonight.”

That gives her pause. Why on earth did Kya need her company when she had a whole island full of acolytes, niblings, and brothers to keep her company? She racks her brain for possible reasons why, then finally understands.

Bumi’s newly acquired airbending is throwing more than just Bumi for a loop.

Lin sighs, takes off her reading glasses, and tosses them on top of her abandoned intelligence report. She’d made a sizable dent in the stack over the past two and a half hours; she’ll get the rest in the morning.

“Fine,” she says, and stands from behind. “Let’s go.”

Kya smiles. “If we hurry we can catch the eleven fifteen tram.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, if you liked this chapter, please considering leaving a comment. They really do make the difference and I'm a bit bogged down now trying to write the end of bsg, so all of your comments and enthusiasm really do help! :)


	15. Game 2: Chrysanthemum (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Chief Beifong, I have an urgent message from Lord Zuko.”
> 
> This can’t be good. “…Proceed.”
> 
> “Zaheer is an airbender and has escaped his prison cell. We can only assume he’s headed for Republic City. The Avatar must be protected.”
> 
> …because of course he is. 
> 
> Because this is a normal call most Police Chiefs receive. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We begin Book 3 in earnest!
> 
> Updates will now be every two weeks, on Thursday like usual. Enjoy!

They leave the police station and enter the cool air of the dying summer night. Fall hasn’t quite come to Republic City; it is still warm enough at night that Lin doesn’t yet need a coat to walk home after a late night at the office—or to the tram station to get Narook’s with Kya, as it turns out. 

Those crisp evenings won’t come until well into fall, when the leaves in the mountain will flare in color and the slate floors of Lin’s apartment will start to become cold in the morning. To say nothing of the way her breath will

puff on her walks to work.

Fall is Lin’s favorite time of year. Just cool enough to wear metal armor without being uncomfortable in the sun, but warm enough she doesn’t freeze every time she steps outside. And to say nothing of the way the leaves look in Avatar Korra park, and the way the city hums in anticipation of the upcoming fall festivals.

If she had it her way, Republic City would have autumnal temperatures all year long. Then her city would be perfect.

But it’s not time for that yet. Not for another few weeks. 

Lin notices Kya is quiet as they walk to the station, which is unusual for her. The metalbender steps onto the tram after her, tossing her coin for fare into the collection bucket and taking a look around the car out of habit. Only a few others, mostly people going home from late shifts, and nobody who is interested in them.

Kya takes a seat near the back and Lin leans against a metal pole opposite Kya. 

“I’m surprised you’re not hurrying back to the island to celebrate,” she says after three stops of utter silence. The fact that Kya has been silent for longer than five minutes is worrying enough, but ten? She’s definitely preoccupied. 

Kya starts at Lin’s voice. “Sorry?”

Lin wraps an arm around the pole and slides her hands between the slits of her armor, into her pockets. And here she thought Tenzin was the airhead. “The new airbenders. Tenzin is ecstatic, I’m sure, about whatever his name is.”

Something dark passes over Kya’s face; Lin sees the corner of her eye twitch, her laugh lines wrinkling just for a moment, before it passes. “He’s very happy.”

Lin frowns but says nothing. They pop out the back door of the tram car and walk the block to Narook’s, passing under the noren and into the vestibule. The door is propped open to the night; as they step inside, the noodlery’s namesake brightens from his spot behind the bar. 

“Kya!” he exclaims with a wave. “I didn’t know you were back in town!”

“Hi, Narook,” she says with a slight smile and a lackluster wave. “It’s good to see you. Business good?”

“Can’t complain, can’t complain,” he says, and then his eyes pass over Lin and he falters for a moment. But then he plasters on the wide smile Lin has come to think is endemic in Southern Water Tribe culture. “And Chief Beifong! This is a surprise.”

“We’re just going to grab a booth in the back, if that’s okay?” Kya asks, and Narook nods.

He grabs up two menus and comes out from behind the bar to seat them himself. The eatery is pretty crowded despite the lateness of the hour, primarily third-shift workers eating dinner before heading off to their factory jobs. Lin spots diners of all nationalities, not just Water Tribe. 

“You want a glass of sea prune wine?” Narook asks as he seats them. “We just got the good stuff in last week.”

Kya glances at Lin, just for a second, and shakes her head. “Oh, no. Not this time, but thank you. Just water, I think.”

He nods and turns to Lin. “And for you, Chief?”

She really wishes civilians would refrain from using her title in public, but she supposes that’s what she gets for wearing her uniform everywhere. “Water’s fine.”

“You got it. I’ll be right back with those.”

He disappears back to the front to get their drinks, and Lin turns back to Kya. 

“What, you don’t want a cup of bone broth?” she asks deadpan. Kya kicks her under the table; her boot skids off Lin’s metal shin guard, and Lin watches Kya wince in pain. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Kya grumbles, and picks up her menu.

Lin does the same. She’s not feeling exactly like having soup. When Narook comes back with their water, she orders a seaweed salad, a plate of sea hen dumplings, and a small miso-kelp soup along with Kya’s squid ink noodles and a plate of octopus salad.

When he leaves, Lin leans back into the corner of the booth so she can see Kya and also the entire rest of the restaurant, and crosses her arms over her chest. “So what’s this really about, Kya?”

She looks up at her, startled out of her thoughts and from bending her straw around in her glass slow circles. “What?”

“You didn’t cross the bay and wander into the heart of the city to deliver an invoice,” Lin says flatly, wishing not for the first time she had inherited her mother’s Truth Seeing abilities. 

Kya tugs her bottom lip into her mouth, and it would take only the most unobservant rookie beat cop to miss her nervous energy and tense body language. 

“It’s stupid,” Kya says.

“It’s selfish,” Kya says.

“It’s…dumb,” Kya says. 

She blows a piece of hair out of her face before wrinkling her nose in frustration—which is, Lin thinks suddenly, very cute—and shoving the piece of hair behind her ear. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Lin inclines her head, reaches for her water, and sips without saying a word.

Kya sighs defensively and crosses her arms over her chest to mirror Lin. “The Island is just very claustrophobic tonight, okay?”

Lin chews silently on a piece of ice and puts her cup back on the table.

Kya sighs again and runs a hand over her hair distractedly. “It’s just…a lot you know? The noise, the people.”

Lin raises an eyebrow. Kya loves a party, loves an excuse to get together with her family to tease her brothers or dote on her niblings. Every birth, every birthday, every major holiday since Kya had left, Kya had always breezed into Republic City the day before and stayed for Agni knew how long. Lin would know—every time Kya or Bumi entered the city, her AC of Special Services was put on alert in case they needed a protection detail. 

Lin is honestly surprised Kya hasn’t gone home yet. This is the longest she had stayed in Republic City in years.

“Okay, fine,” Kya says in frustration, when Lin still hasn’t said anything. “Maybe I’m a bit upset.”

“Upset?”

Kya sighs a third time, which Lin thinks is a bit dramatic, but drama has always been Kya’s wheelhouse. “It’s just—look, no offense, Lin, but you aren’t exactly the forgettable type.”

“…Meaning?”

The waterbender runs a hand over her silver hair  _ again _ , her tongue darting in and out over her lips as she struggles to find the right words. “My entire life, Tenzin has been the star. It’s been Bumi and I against the world for years—you know, the misfit kids of Avatar Aang.”

Lin crosses her arms back over her chest and inclines her head to indicate she’s still listening. 

“He went off to the United Forces, I traveled the world and opened my practice when Mom needed me in the South Pole, but I thought—finally—we all might have finally gotten over it all. But now Bum’s just—”

She throws her hands up in frustration, not finishing her sentence.

Lin needs her to finish the sentence, to make sure Kya’s problem is actually what she’s letting onto. “He’s just what, Kya?”

“An _ airbender. _ ”

Kya says it like she’s going to cry. She looks like she’s going to cry, too, which makes Lin feel hopelessly awkward. What was it with her old friends coming to her with all of their feelings? Lin swears if Tenzin suddenly materializes and starts blubbering about how excited he is to rebuild the Air Nation, she’s going to lose it. 

“He’s an airbender and Tenzin is so, so happy,” Kya continues, and Lin hears her voice crack. The older woman stops, swallows, and stares at the ceiling for a second to compose herself. “I just—I know Mom is happy, too, and Dad would be overjoyed. But I’m—I shouldn’t be so bitter about it.”

Lin frowns and reaches for her glass. She traces her fingers through the condensation as she watches Kya’s emotions run riot across her face. Whatever Kya’s thinking about, she’s getting angry. Lin can see the shift in her eyes, from watery to flinty.

“And you know what?” Kya finally asks. “Maybe I should be happy. Maybe I should be happy Bumi gets to be an airbender, and that he and Tenzin can blow air around and he can become a master, too. Maybe I should just fucking go home where people actually respect me and my bending, and I’m not treated like a third-rate citizen on the island I grew up on, if they even fucking know who I am at all.”

Kya is so upset the ice in her glass has melted completely, and the water is starting to steam.

“Kya,” Lin says slowly.

“What, Lin?”

She nods at the glass, and Kya swears. The waterbender waves her hand, and the ice cubes reform. Kya stares at the glass for a long time, then sighs a fourth time in as many minutes and rubs at her temple. 

“I don’t know, Lin. I’m just—”

“Let me stop you there,” she says, because she is watching Narook weave through the tables with a tray of their orders. He sets their orders in front of them, plus fresh waters, a little bottle of oyster sauce for Kya, and a plate of pickled lichen and fiddleheads with a few chopped pine nuts sprinkled on top. He winks at Kya, then lets them be.

“He always gives me extra octopus salad,” Kya says with a sad little smile towards a plate Narook had sat in front of her.

“And an appetizer,” Lin adds, pouring herself a bit of soy sauce and then adding enough hot sauce to trigger a volcanic eruption. 

Kya picks up her chopsticks and holds the plate of octopus out to Lin. “Do you want a little bit?”

Lin considers, then holds out the extra plate Narook had brought for her dumplings. Kya uses the butt ends of her chopsticks to push some of the pickled octopus onto her plate, then sets it to the side and pulls her eerily black bowl of squid ink soup and tries a steaming mouthful of noodles and tentacles. 

Lin dips a dumpling in her soy and hot sauce concoction, takes a bite, and waits.

“I know I sound like an asshole,” the waterbender says after she swallows. “I’m just…I’m so tired, Lin. I’m almost sixty. Bumi  _ is _ sixty. I thought we had finally moved past this.”

Lin watches as she empties a good amount of oyster sauce into the broth and gives it a stir. She’s no good at this kind of shit, and here she is playing emotional council to probably the most emotional person in her life. 

“Why don’t you go back?” Lin asks finally. “If you don’t feel respected here in Republic City?”

Kya gives her the saddest expression she has ever seen. “I can’t go. They need me, now more than ever. And so do you.”

Maybe it’s just sad because it’s Kya, but she can see the hurt, the confusion, the exhaustion, the years of built-up resentment exposed by a single act of the Universe. An act that has Bumi just as torn up as his sister, two siblings grieving over a loss and a gain for two very similar reasons.

“I think,” she says slowly, reaching for her bowl of seaweed salad and cradling it in her right hand, “that you should talk to Bumi.”

“Why? So I can make myself feel even worse by tearing him down?”

“No,” Lin tells her. “I think you should talk to him because I spoke to him this afternoon.”

Kya blinks in surprise. “You did? What did he say?”

She shakes her head. It’s not her place to say. “You both are up with the sun.”

“He always goes down to the beach before breakfast,” Kya says softly, looking down at her bowl.

The metalbender nods. “He still drinks pu’erh. But I’m sure he’d take coffee, if the Island has any.”

Kya looks back up and gives her a soft smile. “Thanks, Lin.”

Lin offers her an upward tick of the side of her mouth, then digs her chopsticks into her seaweed salad without another word.

They finish their meal in silence. Kya doesn’t ask after her cravings, or her appointments, for which she is grateful. Narook comes with the cheque almost an hour later as the restaurant is emptying out towards closing time. Lin throws a couple of bills down from her wallet before Kya can protest.

She does, of course.

“I was going to get that!” Kya complains as Narook takes the tray with the bills and the receipt away. “I was the one who invited you here, after all.”

“You can get the next one.”

She raises one silver eyebrow. “Is this going to be a habit?” 

“What was it you said to me in the South Pole? ‘It’s what friends do?’”

Kya rolls her eyes, but Lin has coaxed a real smile from her—one that reaches her eyes and makes her laugh lines crinkle. Lin scoots herself from the booth, taking her small container of leftovers from the table and walking out with Kya.

It’s well past midnight when they emerge.

The cool air bathes their faces as they walk to the trolley station, which is now running on the night schedule. Kya exhales softly and rolls out her neck, and Lin’s own neck twinges in sympathy. The waterbender yawns, and Lin stifles one of her own. It’s been a damn long day, and this is where they go their separate ways.

The midnight-thirty tram heading towards Lin’s apartment rattles slowly towards them, stopping at the station a few blocks down. Lin stares at the light, feeling the gentle vibrating of the tracks in the pavement, and realizes suddenly that the ferry to Air Temple Island has long since closed for business for the evening.

“If you don’t feel like bending yourself across the bay,” Lin starts to offer, then trails off, uncertain if she’s overstepping.

Kya smiles, but shakes her head. “No, it’s fine. I can make it.”

Lin nods, and the vibrations in the tracks kick up again as the tram starts for them. Lin fishes a coin for fare out of her pocket and is startled by how close Kya suddenly is to her.

“G’night, Lin,” the waterbender says softly, and before she can register the movement, Kya presses a gentle kiss to her cheek. “Thanks for offering to let me crash at your place, and for…tonight. I know crying girls aren’t exactly your thing.”

Lin is so thrown by the gesture that all she can do is stare. Her tram pulls up and she gets on it with barely a nod goodbye. She leans numbly on a pole near the back, and she swears the spot of skin Kya kissed near her ear burns the entire way home.

-/-

The next day Mako calls her near the end of the day and tells her he’s leaving with Korra to go look for airbenders.

She gets so angry she slams her phone receiver down into the cradle, then spins in her chair and pinches the bridge of her nose.

“Hui!”

Hui materializes in the doorway; she’s got her briefcase in hand, like she was caught leaving. “Chief?”

“Tell Captain Pan that Detective Samten is taking over Mako’s cases, effective immediately. And tell Saikhan, too.”

“Of course,” Hui agrees immediately. “And the reason why, should she ask?”

“Because Mako’s decided to go cavorting around the Earth Kingdom with Tenzin and the Avatar,” Lin practically spits, wishing she had something she could throw across the office if nothing for the satisfying noise it would make as it clattered against the wall. 

“I’ll tell Captain Pan on my way out. G’night, Chief.”

Lin eyes her mountain of leftover paperwork and is secretly grateful for it. “Good night.”

-/-

“Spirits, Lin! Watch it!”

They are in the dojo, and Lin has just thrown a rock the size of a record player at Saikhan’s head. He’d dodged, but he still shoots her an indignant look as the earth hits the wall behind him and shatters loudly.

Lin growls and kicks up another block, roundhousing it towards Saikhan’s chest. She’s had a rough morning in meetings with Raiko and Hui had it in her head that sparring would do her frustrations good.

That is all well and good for Hui, who isn’t in the ring, but from Lin’s vantage point it appears as if Saikhan is regretting his decision to agree to the match.

They aren’t using cables, and Saikhan’s always been better with metal than the earth. He manages to cleave the earthen block in two, but she sends another one right after him. It hits him straight in the sternum, knocking him back against the wall.

The buzzer sounds, ending the match, as he slides down the wall in defeat.

Saikhan groans and lets his head fall back. 

She resists the urge to sigh. Either she is finally coming back to her conditioning, or Saikhan is slipping. This match hasn’t been nearly what she needs to work out the aggression that has been plaguing her all week. 

Still, she walks over and wordlessly reaches down to help Saikhan up.

“I’m too old for this shit,” he tells her as he takes her forearm. 

Lin raises an eyebrow as she hauls him to his feet. “You losing your touch on me?”

“I’m fifty-three,” he grumbles, brushing dirt off his sparring gi, “the body gets old.”

Secretly Lin agrees. Her body aches, and she hasn’t sparred anyone except cadets in ages. Her last major fight was against the Equalists, and she tries not to think about that. “The office is making you soft.”

Saikhan rolls his eyes. “Next time you’re fighting the kid.”

“Who, Mako?”

“Yeah. He’s the only one at the precinct who could actually give you a run for your money these days,” her second says as he towels sweat from his brow. “Unless you want Hui to call in Councilman Tenzin?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Would keep him honest,” Saikhan offers up jokingly, but drifts away for water and lets the subject drop.

Lin swipes her own water bottle from the bench and takes a swig. She really does need to spar more often, otherwise she’ll be the one getting soft. She would fight Mako, or even Tenzin, had the both of them not gone off with Korra to hunt for new airbenders.

Which reminds her, she really needs to chew Korra out for absconding with her best detective with absolutely zero notice the next time she sees her. Right after she chews out Mako for calling her while already aboard the airship about to leave. 

“Hui,” she says as she walks by the nonbender gym, towards the locker room.

Hui looks up from where she has been preparing the squat a decent amount of weights at the rack. “Chief?”

“When Avatar Korra returns, please schedule a meeting with her.”

“Yes, Chief.”

She nods, then goes to change back into her uniform.

-/-

It’s been a week since Korra, Tenzin, Mako, and the rest of the Avatar’s little gang left by Ba Sing Se by way of approximately fifteen Earth Kingdom villages and towns. The last time Mako had radioed, they’d picked up a young airbender named Kai who might have been more trouble than he was worth. 

After another lackluster lunchtime sparring session with Saikhan later, she puts her gym bag back in her locker, locks the platinum padlock, then goes upstairs to her office. 

Before she can even get in the door a voice calls, 

“Chief!”

She turns to find Upper Management’s Communicators operator weaving towards her through the secretaries and the typing pool. 

“Yes?”

“Radio call for you.”

Lin frowns. Mako has already checked in for the day. “Who is it?”

“The Order of the White Lotus.”

She blinks, but follows him into the radio room. He stands just outside the door as she sits in front of the receiver. “This is Beifong.”

_ “Chief Beifong, I have an urgent message from Lord Zuko.” _

This can’t be good. “…Proceed.”

_ “Zaheer is an airbender and has escaped his prison cell. We can only assume he’s headed for Republic City. The Avatar must be protected.” _

…because of course he is. 

Because this is a normal call most Police Chiefs receive. 

“…I see. Thank you.” Lin hangs up the phone, mind racing, and turns into the bullpen. “Saikhan!”

Both Saikhan and Hui slam the doors to their offices open so fast the four secretaries for the Assistant Chiefs startle. 

“Chief?” both ask at the same time.

“My office,” Lin says, already striding for the doors. “Immediately!” 

Both of them hurry to join her, and she locks the door and pulls the shades behind them. “We have a situation.”

“What’s going on, Lin?”

Lin gives him a grim look. “The ringleader of the Red Lotus has escaped.”

Saikhan’s eyes widen just as Hui takes in a sharp intake of breath. 

“Also, he’s apparently a fucking airbender now, too.”

Both of them stare at her in stunned silence.

“They think he’s coming here?” Saikhan finally manages. 

“Where else would he go?”

Hui frowns. “To the other prisons. There are three more of them, correct?”

Lin glances at Saikhan; he looks graver than she’s ever seen him. He crosses his arms over his chest and strokes his chin. “If that’s the case, we have more lead time. We could set up a protective detail for the Avatar, set up a decoy.”

“We’ll need to get her back to Republic City first,” Hui points out.

Lin grimaces. Having Korra rattling around the Earth Kingdom might keep her hidden for the time being, but she can’t protect Korra anywhere but Republic City. She doesn’t have the jurisdiction, let alone the resources, she has here at home.

Saikhan pipes up. “We can put her in a safe house once we get her back.”

“Have Jeong-hoon set the decoy at the Beifong estate,” Lin tells Saikhan, thinking fast. Hui pulls a legal pad out of her desk and starts scribbling notes. “Our most elite guard. Shuffle them off Wu’s detail if you have to.”

“Shouldn’t you be telling Jeong-hoon this yourself?” he ventures cautiously.

“No, you’ll be doing that,” Lin says, already stepping behind her desk to pack it up. “I’m going to Ba Sing Se.”

She might be busy shoving files into her file drawer, but doesn’t miss the look Saikhan and Hui exchange. 

“Don’t start.”

“Lin—”

“I said don’t start,” she snaps. “I’m fine. Korra is stubborn. She won’t—”

“Listen?” Saikhan finishes sarcastically. “Who could possibly have foreseen?”

She glares at him, leaning over her desk and bracing herself.

“It’s only been a week, Chief—” 

“You are in no state to travel,” Saikhan insists, cutting Hui off. 

“I’m fine.”

“I swear to the Spirits, Lin,” he threatens, “I will call Master Kya.”

“Then do it!” she all but growls. “She’ll clear me.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

Lin ignores Hui.

“We’ll handle it,” Lin tells them, checking her top drawer closed with her hip. “Hui, clear my schedule for the next week and call Kya. Tell her I’ll meet her on Air Temple Island at the healing suite and she can clear me for travel. Saikhan, while I’m gone, have Support get an airship up and running. Hui, all important papers into my briefcase and go to my apartment and pack me a bag.”

“I—”

“I’ll be leaving immediately,” she overrides, tossing Hui her keys. 

Hui catches them numbly, and Lin doesn’t wait to see if they comply with her orders; she’s already striding for the door, relying on them to do their damn jobs and support her, just like they always have. 

She slams the doors to her office open and makes for the bullpen, leaving the entirety of Upper Management buffeting about in her wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're screaming at Kya and Lin to kiss, don't worry, I am, too.
> 
> Leave a comment if you like what you read! :)


	16. Game 2: Wheel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin goes to Ba Sing Se.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whispers* I'm so sorry.

Kya is waiting for her at the dock on Air Temple Island, arms crossed over her chest.

Lin immediately feels her hackles raise. She _knew_ Saikhan and Hui would call ahead and blab to Kya. Cowards, the both of them. She pulls up to the dock and angrily lashes the Republic City speedboat to the tie point as the waterbender approaches. 

She scowls up at her as Kya gets closer. “Are you going to tell me off, too?” 

“This isn’t a good idea,” she replies flatly.

“Are you just saying that because Hui and Saikhan told you to or do you actually think it?”

“I actually think it!” Kya gestures broadly, clearly already frustrated. “How could you possibly think it’s a good idea, Lin? It’s only been a week and—”

“If I don’t go, who will?” Lin snaps, and steps out of the boat on to the dock.

“Are you really going to risk all this progress? All that work?” Kya asks, crossing her arms over her chest again. “You qi is all over the place right now and your aura is a mess. If you go, I guarantee you’ll relapse.”

“I won’t.”

“You will!” Kya is angry now, angrier than Lin has probably ever seen her. “I busted my ass keeping you alive when you detoxed. I didn’t do all of that for you to go and relapse again.”

“I paid—”

“I don’t care about the _money,_ Lin. I care about your _life._ ”

“Really?” Lin asks. She’s already raring for a fight and apparently Kya is ready to provide one. “Do you really care? Because right now it sounds like all you care about is your time investment.”

“Of course I _care, Lin._ You’re my _friend_ ,” she stresses. “I’d hate to see you relapse because of a stupid decision.”

“I’m not going to drink,” Lin grits out, clenching her fists at her sides. “I’m just going to—”

“You don’t need to get her,” Kya says patiently. “Tenzin can—”

“If the news about the Red Lotus comes from Tenzin, she’ll run and you know it,” Lin all but snarls, placing her hands defiantly on her hips and glaring at Kya. Kya glares right back.

Lin knows enough about Korra now to know she is hotheaded, impulsive, and doesn’t take kindly to betrayal. The news Tenzin had been part of the reason she had been locked in the White Lotus compound would not go over well, and Tenzin will be tactless enough to entirely screw the frogpooch with the delivery.

“Korra won’t listen to anybody besides me, and you know it. If Tenzin tells her they have to come back, she’ll probably run off and try to go find Zaheer and fight him herself. You know she will.”

“Lin—”

“Dammit, Kya, I’m trying to save lives,” Lin snaps, taking a step forward. “Zaheer’s men killed Uncle Sokka. The longer I stay here, the longer Zaheer has to find her. Do you really want what they did to Uncle Sokka to be Korra? Tenzin? What about Mako, Bolin, and Asami? The new airbenders they are picking up?”

Kya’s gaze hardens. “What if I don’t want it to be you?”

Lin falters. She feels her hands balling into fists at her side as she tries desperately to not care about the fact that Kya cares if she gets hurt. But Kya would care about it if anybody got hurt, she’s a healer, for Spirits sake.

“It doesn’t matter if I die. What matters is if the Avatar is—”

“Of course it matters if you _die,_ Lin,” Kya exclaims, casting her hands skyward. “Spirits! This isn’t some atonement you have to undertake for your relapse.”

“Oh yes, because everything comes back to my alcoholism like this isn’t my literal damned job!”

“You were the one who invoked Uncle Sokka,” Kya snaps, hurt in her eyes. “He was my uncle, too. You don’t get exclusive rights because he was fucking—”

“Enough!” She yells it, actually yells, and Kya actually takes a step back. She watches Kya’s hand go instinctively to the pouch at her hip and she almost bends the blade out in her armor sleeve out of instinct. 

They stare at each other.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Kya.”

“I don’t need this to beat you,” Kya replies, suddenly deathly calm. “You’re the jackass fighting with a waterbender while standing at the end of a pier.”

Lin realizes, like an idiot, that Kya is right. She’s literally cornered, water on every side and Kya in between her and the only escape route to dry land. She could bend the boat, use her cables, but Kya would freeze her in a block of ice or get her into a bubble before she could blink.

She forces herself to unclench her fists, take a deep breath.

Silence stretches between them.

“If you go and something goes wrong, what’s to stop you from drinking again?” Kya finally says. “The force of your will?”

“Yes.”

Kya raises an eyebrow. “Because that worked so well last time?”

Lin rankles at the insinuation.

Yes, she had slipped. She had relapsed. But she is fine now. Or she will be, if she could just get Korra into her city and then get Zaheer back into the custody of the White Lotus.

“Spare me the bullshit, Kya, and let me go and do my job.”

“I don’t think I will.”

A growl tears its way from her throat, and Kya looks unimpressed at her involuntary posturing.

“You don’t scare me, Lin.”

“I’m not trying to! I’m trying to do my job.”

“Your _job_ right now is to focus on your recovery,” Kya says impatiently.

“No, my job is protecting this city, and protecting the Avatar.”

“You’re a _week_ out of detox.”

“I was sober for eighteen years!”

“And then you binge drank for seven months!” Kya waves her hand expansively over the harbor behind Lin, her frustration back full force. She’s practically vibrating with it. “You’re the Chief of Police, Lin, your actions have consequences. Forgive me for having the concern you might break sobriety again, especially when you haven’t been going to therapy or meetings like we outlined in your recovery plan.”

 _Like you promised me_ goes unsaid, but Lin’s blood runs cold for an entirely different reason. Kya knows. Kya knows she’s lied to her. “How did—?”

“You don’t think Hui and I speak?” Kya asks, eyes flashing. “I’m not an idiot, Lin. Or maybe I am, because I trusted you to tell me the truth.”

“I’ve been—”

“Busy?” Kya says flatly. “Sure. I’ve heard that one before. So has Tenzin.”

“Don’t bring him into this!”

“I can, and I will. You have a pattern of avoidance, and it’s going to really fuck you over one day.”

Lin realizes with a start she’s clenching her fists again. She grits her teeth and growls, “I won’t break sobriety.”

“And if you do?”

“I’m in _recovery,_ I’m not an _invalid._ ”

“But you _are_ an alcoholic.”

This isn’t getting anywhere. Lin turns on her heel and starts to unwind the mooring line to the speedboat. “I’m going.”

“Of course you are,” Kya tells her bitterly, putting her hands on her hips again. “I don’t know what the hell you need me for.”

She tries to tell herself the cool tone in Kya’s voice doesn’t cut, but it does.

“What the hell did you come out here for, anyway?” Kya asks. “You knew I wouldn’t let you go.”

“I thought you’d be sensible,” Lin says, gathering up the line and throwing it into the boat.

“I _am_ being sensible,” the older woman exclaims desperately. “I’m your friend.”

“You’re my healer.”

“I’m both!”

Lin feels her lip curl up in a snarl and hops into the boat with a bitter, “I never should have let you treat me.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. And I shouldn’t have taken you as a client.”

They stare at each other for a long time, the only sound passing between them the noise of the water against the boat’s hull and the wind in the leaves behind them.

“You’ll go whether or not I give my blessing as a healer,” the waterbender finally says flatly and waves her off with a dismissive gesture. “So just go. Leave. And find another healer to look after you when you get home, I’m done.”

“Fine.”

“Fine,” Kya practically spits, and Lin punches the engine of the boat on so she doesn’t have to hear her turning her back and walk away down the pier.

Leaving her, just like everyone does.

.

.

.

Lin manages to compose herself as she pilots the boat back to the dock, and she spends the walk back to the station coming up with an escape strategy.

There’s no way Hui or Saikhan will let her on an airship without Kya’s blessing.

They won’t even let her _near_ one if they suspect she’s going to bolt.

She has to pretend like she’ll let Tenzin, Mako, and Bumi handle Korra’s extraction.

She has to pretend she’s focused on the set up.

She has to get them to let their guard down.

She sets her jaw as she walks back into the station and takes the stairs up to the fifth floor; she’s lied to them before, and she’ll lie to them again.

Hui and Saikhan are still in her office, maps of the city strewn over both coffee tables.

“Chief,” Hui says in surprise, straightening up from where she’s colonized Lin’s desk and tucking the mouth of the phone receiver into her shoulder. “Did Master Kya—”

“No.”

Saikhan and Hui exchange a glance, but Lin ignores it.

She goes to stand next to Saikhan’s array of maps and inspects the circled safe houses. She needs to distract herself, and it helps that she actually cares about which one they choose. The underground ones are right out, as are ones anywhere close to her grandfather’s old estate, Air Temple Island, or the Sato residence. They could stash Korra in the Phoenix District safe house, but that is too close to Air Temple Island for Lin’s comfort.

She stops strategizing when she realizes her assistant and her second are staring at her.

Lin looks up at them and glares. “What?”

It’s Saikhan who hesitantly breaks the silence. “Are you—”

“It’s fine,” she says gruffly, waving off his concern like she would an annoying fly. “We have more important things to worry about. Hui, set up a meeting with Jeong-hoon to discuss the setup of the Beifong Estate, and get Communications to send a cable to Mako for immediate contact.”

Hui nods, and scribbles on her notepad as she waits for whoever she’s on hold with to answer.

“I want mugshots of Zaheer distributed to all patrol officers,” Lin tells Saikhan.

Saikhan grimaces. “They never took one.”

“Are you serious?”

He shrugs.

Lin growls in actual irritation. The White Lotus is quickly becoming her least favorite bureaucratic organization. “They _have_ to have someone on their payroll who can put out a meaningful sketch.”

“I’ll call again.”

He disappears into Hui’s office to make the call, and Lin sits on the couch and tries to think if she knows anybody along the Mo Ce Coast with whom she could pull some strings. She’s not above using the vast Beifong fortune and name recognition to get what she needs, even if it would technically put Korra outside of her jurisdiction.

She’s sure Izumi’s son would spare some people to aid in Korra’s protection, if she (or Bumi or Tenzin) asked nicely.

“Have Communications cable General Iroh as well.”

Hui looks up from her notepad and covers the receiver again. “General Iroh, Chief?”

Lin nods but doesn’t clarify.

Hui hesitates, but just for a moment. She finishes her conversation on the phone, then folds her notepad closed and starts for the door.

“Hui,” Lin calls before she can get far.

She stops with her hand on the lock. “Chief?”

“Those notes—”

“I’ll burn them,” she promises, then slips out into the office to go about her duties as ordered.

As soon as the door swings closed, Lin starts to think about how exactly she’ll get to the airfield without Hui or Saikhan noticing.

-/-

She goes home later than normal, her afternoon and evening filled with emergency meetings. She takes her duffle bag back to her apartment and fills it with enough clothing for a week away, then takes it back to work the next morning. When she steps into her office after a quick pit stop to the locker room, Hui and Saikhan share mutual looks of surprise.

“And here I thought she might have tried to drive to Ba Sing Se,” she hears Saikhan mutter to Hui as she passes by Hui’s office to use the washroom.

She’d have to be an idiot to _drive_ to Ba Sing Se. Even in a Jeep, the roads are garbage and disenfranchised bandits filled the Earth Kingdom. Not a problem for her, but it would delay her even longer than the week it would already have taken to drive.

No, the only sensible way to go is by air.

“Schedule for today, Hui?” she asks when she returns.

Hui, for perhaps the first time in her entire career as Lin’s assistant, looks sheepish.

Damn. They really _had_ thought she would try to bolt overnight. That were right, sort of, but she’d never be stupid enough to say it. 

“I see,” Lin says with a little curl of her lip, and she turns on her heel. “I’m going to inspect the safe house.”

“But Chief—“

“On my way back I’ll be stopping by the Beifong estate to check the decoy preparations.”

Hui hesitates, but nods. “I’ll…gather the proper paperwork.”

“See that you do,” she tells her, then goes back downstairs, takes her bag out of her locker, and takes the cable car to the airship depot.

“I’m taking an airship to the Phoenix District safehouse,” she says as she walks in, flashing the gold chief badge on her breast like a weapon.

“Do you need any assistance?” the woman behind the counter asks nervously as she hands over the proper paperwork.

“No.”

.

.

.

She gets out of distance of the Republic City Police Department’s radio transponder before Saikhan or Hui notices she’s gone.

Or at least, she thinks she does, because she doesn’t receive a single radio message from Republic City for her entire two day journey.

-/-

The name Beifong still carries weight in the Earth Kingdom.

She has it on good account her sister drives the Earth Queen absolutely bonkers, and she gets pulled aside for special screening and the weakest interrogation attempt she’s ever seen. However as soon as it’s made clear she’s the _other_ Beifong progeny, Lin is sped through customs with such alacrity Lin wonders when her mother stopped by and put the fear of the Spirits into the officials here.

It helps she’s here on Republic City business and not personal business.

She’s tailed by Dai Li agents as soon as she steps off her airship, docked at the special waystations meant specifically for the air conveyances of the rich and powerful. She bends off the soles of her boots and feels them skirting the shadows.

She could put them in the ground where they _belong_ , but she doesn’t have the time. Korra’s already been without protection for three days, and there’s no telling whether Zaheer knows her current location.

She doesn’t delay; she heads straight for the Upper Ring residence reserved for the Avatar.

.

.

.

She’s not surprised her message to Mako didn’t go through.

It was probably intercepted by the same agents currently standing outside the house, if her mother’s stories were any indication.

She _is_ surprised Korra agrees to go back to Republic City so readily, as long as Lin helps extricate a bevy of captured airbenders.

The kids and Tenzin go out to inspect the perimeter of the palace while out for a ‘walk.’ Lin passes, but gives Mako a glare so fierce he visibly swallows as he hurries out the door after Korra. Bumi immediately pops out a travel pai sho board and slaps it on the table, gesturing for her to join him.

Lin sighs and sits down for the game as the front doors swing closed.

“You’re looking hale and hearty,” he says as he passes over a bag of tiles. “I’m surprised Kya let you out of Republic City.”

She makes a noncommittal noise and sorts her titles out into their respective piles.

“Unless she…didn’t let you go?”

Lin rolls her eyes in order not to betray the truth. “First to five, or are you still a coward?”

“Coward any day. First to ten.”

“Fine.”

Lin pulls a white jade tile out of her pile and slaps it into her gate with a fierceness it definitely doesn’t deserve. Technically she _is_ the guest; Bumi had invited her to the game.

Bumi immediately rests his palm on his chin and stares at the tile as if it would tell him the secrets of the universe. “Jeez, you still play the White Jade gambit?”

“Shut up and play.”

Her old friend grins and plays a matching tile in his gate.

She nudges her jade tile into the red gate on the right of the board and watches as he carefully selects a chrysanthemum tile. 

He sets it down and says, “Thank you for taking care of her.”

Lin blinks and looks up from the board. “Excuse me?”

“Kya,” he says simply, looking up and meeting her gaze. “Thanks for taking care of her last week. She can get lost.”

Lin swallows, unsure what to do with a suddenly serious Bumi. Not to mention the thought of Kya makes her chest ache with guilt. She breaks eye contact and looks away, plays a rose tile. Then she sits back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest.

Bumi strokes his beard, then grins and slowly and deliberately picks out a jasmine tile. Lin watches as uses it to cancel out her growing red tile harmony. 

“That’s one,” he says in delight. “Nine left.”

Lin stares down at the board and realizes he’s somehow also managed to make _his own damn harmony_ between the jade and jasmine tile when she wasn’t paying attention.

Damn. She’s rusty. And Bumi clearly has sharpened his skills since she last played him.

“You want to play like _that?_ ” Lin all but growls, and Bumi grin morphs into one of the shit-eating variety.

“Bring it on, Beifong.”

-/-

After dinner, as they wait for night to fall and the city to sleep, Tenzin approaches her as she stands guard by the front door.

“Lin?” Tenzin asks, robes rustling nervously, “may I speak with you in private?”

She glances back at the doors to the back room, where the kids are entertaining Jinora to keep her distracted from her anxieties about Kai, and nods.

When she doesn’t move, Tenzin sighs and goes to close the door. She taps her heel to make sure they are truly alone and out of earshot, then leans against the wall and crosses her arms over her chest.

He strokes his beard, much like Bumi had done a few hours before. Where the two of them had picked up the gesture, she can’t say. She thinks it must have been extensive exposure to Uncle Sokka’s goatee and expansive collection of fake beards and mustaches.

“I wanted to say how much I—” He starts, stops, apparently suddenly at a loss for words again. “When we were younger, and you were—when I was—”

She raises an eyebrow. “Spit it out, Tenzin.”

He sighs and buffs a hand over the top of his bald tattooed head. “I’ve had some time to think. Since you came to the Island.”

Where the fresh hell is this going?

“And I just wanted to say I’m sorry I didn’t notice your drinking problem when we were together.”

She feels her scowl tighten, and she taps her foot again out of habit. The kids are still well out of range, as are the Dai Li agents lurking outside the house, but she absolutely does not want to discuss this with him with them so close by.

“We were drifting apart and you’ve always been private, even when we were together,” Tenzin continues, his nervous habit of rambling back again like he’s twenty and trying to write his first speech as a council page, “but it’s no excuse and I—”

“Stop,” she says, and mercifully he instantly stops talking.

Silence stretches between them.

She’s glad for the confirmation he’d never noticed. He’d been busy with his father, with his burgeoning duties, with teaching at the Air Temples and clerking at the council office in preparation to take his spot on the council. She’d been busy too, with climbing the ladder and doing her damndest to make a name for herself as anything other than Chief Beifong’s daughter.

By the time she’d _really_ started drinking, when it had gotten bad, when she had had to get sober, they were barely seeing each other twice a month with how busy their respective schedules had gotten. She hadn’t accepted it at the time, but their drifting apart had been her saving grace, even if it had been one of the largest contributing factors to their split.

“You lied that one time,” Tenzin says softly, and she shoots him a glare out of the corner of her eye. “Do you remember?”

Lin does.

She remembers the night, one rare night they spent together, about eight months after she’d stopped drinking.

_“You didn’t have a beer with dinner,” Tenzin murmured, stroking a hand down her arm as they lay cuddled in bed after a bout of particularly vigorous sex. It had been amazing, leaving Lin sore, incredibly content, and falling asleep from the effects of her orgasm. Tenzin, however, was apparently wide awake and thinking. “You didn’t have the baijiu out when we got home either. Are you okay?”_

_Leave it to Tenzin to ruin the moment._

_She was instantly alert, her heart thundering in her chest once again, but for an entirely different reason. A million excuses ran through her head, and she finally settled on,_

_“You don’t like it when I drink around you.”_

_Lame, but technically true._

_“Lin, I don’t mind you drinking,” Tenzin said all at once, turning over to face her properly, his stupid little goatee tickling her face. “Please don’t feel like you have to stop drinking because of Air Nation doctrine. We don’t drink but that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice it yourself.”_

_She knew. Damn how she knew._

_She rolled over onto her stomach so she didn't have to look at his face. “It’s my choice, Tenzin.”_

_“As long as it makes you happy,” he said softly._

Back in the present, Tenzin is staring at her.

“Why did you lie?” he asks, tone beseechingly. “I was your boyfriend. I could have help—”

“You saw what you wanted to see,” she interrupts. She’s not having this conversation with him. He knows now, he helped Kya help her detox, and now he’s keeping her secret. They’re even. “It was never your burden to bear.”

He stares at her.

“Your current burden to bear, however, is more interesting,” she says, and nods towards the closed dining room doors. “An eleven year old pickpocket and your brother? You’d better hope these airbenders we’re busting out of here decide to join you, otherwise I think you’re better off with just your kids.”

Tenzin scoffs. “Don’t be ridiculous! New airbenders, Lin! Can you imagine?”

There is so much happiness in his voice she can’t bring herself to say anything. The burden of his legacy, of Aang’s, had nearly crushed him on numerous occasions. She remembers the nights he’d been kept up with the future of his people, pacing his sleeping cell or her bedroom instead of sleeping. She remembers the night Aang had died and she’d held him as the crushing weight of being _the_ last airbender had finally caught up with him. And how could she forget how the anxiety that came having to repopulate an entire nation had served as the final nail in the coffin for their relationship?

Of course she remembers. How could she forget?

She might have fallen out of his life, or rather forced herself with great skill away from Tenzin after their breakup, but Tenzin had never really left her orbit. They’d circled each other warily for the better part of a decade, hiding behind official duties and stiff niceties. 

But now as their friendship is slowly repairing itself, now that he _knows_ , now that he’s supported her when it matters, and now that he’s staved off extinction for the last time, he’s changing. Now that all that he has to be is a teacher, a leader, a mentor, she can see the weight is lifting.

He’s happier, more ready to smile, than he has been since she’s known him.

He no longer has to be the sole leader of a nation. He no longer has to be a politician, no longer has to eek out a place for his endangered family in a world that seems to increasingly wish they didn’t exist.

No. That’s over.

Instead now Tenzin gets to do what he enjoys, which is gabbing about Air Nation history and politics and culture to a captive audience…only now instead of gabbing to historians and scholars and acolytes, Tenzin gets to do so with a brand new generation of airbenders and Air Nomads.

He’s so excited, and seeing the wonder and hope gleaming in his eyes instead of the dour seriousness that has characterized most of their adult relationship is truly a sight to behold. She’d never say it out loud, but it’s one she’s glad to get to experience.

As he starts to talk about his strategy for teaching airbending to individuals who are _not_ his children, she leans back against the wall and half listens as she returns to her guard duty.

Maybe Harmonic Convergence had been good for _both_ of them in the end.

(Better for him than Lin, but hey, at least she’s sober again.

Or at least she will be, if she can get Korra home and get Zaheer and his quickly escaping team behind bars without someone dying in the process.)

She crosses her arms back over her chest and taps her foot against the ground to check on the lurking Dai Li agents, but she can’t hide the smile that tugs at the right side of her mouth as she listens to him talk.

Once a square nerd, always a nerd. It’s why she’d fallen in love with him in the first place.

She shakes her head fondly to herself. Some things never change.

-/-

Six hours later, rocks slam into the side of the airship, but they manage to get the airbenders out of Ba Sing Se.

She’s very glad she commissioned the airships with steel safety armor. It’s about time it actually worked.

They rendezvous on a mountaintop outside of town, and while Tenzin speaks to the freed airbenders, she radios ahead. The last she had heard, Zaheer had freed Ghazan and was, presumably, either on his way to the Fire Nation to free Ming-Hua or going north to free P'Li.

One is far preferable than the other.

Unfortunately, to know she would have to contact RCPD.

She picks up the radio and keys up. “Come in, NAT-N.”

She pauses for a moment, and then the radio crackles to life.

 _“This is NAT-N. Go ahead,_ ” says the friendly voice of the Air Acolyte from the Northern Air Temple she had spoken with the day before.

“RCCP-B8 to NAT-N. Requesting relay, 10-5. Repeat, 10-5. Over.”

 _“NAT-N to RCPD-B8, 10-2_ ,” says the acolyte cheerfully. _“Hold on 10-5. Message waiting. Would you like it before relay? Over.”_

She blinks. She hadn’t been expecting a message.

“Copy, NAT-N. 10-4. Over.”

_“RCPD-B8, message from OTWL. Reads: 10-34. RL3 to Northern Water Tribe. 10-9 immediately. Over.”_

Lin swallows and runs her finger along the radio transmitter. So Zaheer _had_ gone to the Fire Nation, and it sounds like they had their waterbender. Izumi would be kicking herself, and so would Uncle Zuko. And she knew for a fact Ghazan, Ming-Hua, and Zaheer were more than capable of freeing their firebender friend from the ice prison.

“RCPD-B8 to NAT-N. Please relay to OTWL broadly and to RCPD in Republic City: Copy 10-19, 10-15. ETA 3. Repeat: Copy 10-19, 10-15. ETA 3. Over.”

_“10-4, RCPD-B8. Wilco, over.”_

“Thank you, NAT-N. Over and out.” She hooks the radio transmitter back and turns to her map of the world to begin to plot a course. To avoid Zaheer at all costs, they’ll have to go south. She pulls out her tacks and string and starts to lay out the route.

She hears footsteps and Asami joins her on the bridge.

“Back to Republic City?” she asks, coming over to join Lin by the map.

Lin nods.

“Why are we going south?”

“Zaheer and his gang are in the north,” she says grimly.

Asami nods and runs a finger along her chin. “If you plot the course I can help navigate.”

“You can read a star chart?”

 _“Please,”_ Asami says, tossing her hair over her shoulder, and Lin huffs out a laugh. She forgets sometimes that Asami is more than just a pretty face. “Once we’re up, I can take over for a few hours so you can get some sleep.”

“Thanks.” Lin snips the string once she’s finished and steps back so Asami can see. “We’ll go south, stop to refuel in Gaoling, fly to the Fire Nation and refuel again in Fire Fountain City, then return home.”

“Why not go directly to Republic City from Gaoling?”

“We’ll need to get the decoys in place. We don’t know how many of the Red Lotus are going to reactivate in Republic City.”

Asami nods gravely and reaches for the radio. “I’ll have my people on standby to fly a ship in tomorrow afternoon to Air Temple Island. You can have an airship meet them there, we can exchange a few people in colors similar to ours.”

Kid after her own heart.

“Have your team relay that to Saikhan,” Lin tells her. “Confidentially, for the love of Agni.”

“I’ll have my secretary deliver the message personally.”

-/-

_She walks down the quiet halls of the morgue, shoes screeching against the tile._

_She winces at the sound, looks around at the blank white walls, the absolute lack of humanity._

_She feels out of place here, with her clanking armor, clopping boots, her beating heart._

_“This way,” says the faceless Medical Examiner, and she passes into the morgue after her, where bodies draped with sheets are lined in a neat row in the middle of the room. There are a few attendants standing in the shadows, but she doesn’t focus on them, only on the shrouds._

_“Let’s get this over with,” Lin growls out._

_The ME walks up to the first one. “You know the drill, Chief?”_

_She nods._

_Gloved hands reach down, peel back the sheet and Mako’s cold, lifeless face stares up at her._

_Lin feels like she’s been punched in the gut._

_She has to lean on the table to steady herself, and doing so puts her head directly over Mako’s. His skin is even paler in death, contrasted starkly against his dark hair. There’s no indication of how he died, and she doesn’t want to pull the sheet back further to find out._

_“Who is this, Chief?”_

_She fights the rising bile in her throat to manage, “Detective Mako.” A pause. “Where’s his brother?”_

_The examiner shrugs. “We don’t know.”_

_She squeezes a hand in a fist, fighting back the emotions, the guilt, the anger. Mako. Mako. Mako._ **_Her_ ** _rookie._

_“Are you alright to continue?”_

_She looks up and remembers there are more. So many more. At least five bodies for her to identify._

_The examiner has moved to the next corpse. “Chief?”_

_She pushes herself away and walks, stiff-legged and numb-hearted, to the next body._

_The face of her assistant chief stares up at her, his jowly face set firm, head balding, skin only just beginning to wrinkle._

_“Saikhan,” she breathes in shock, and is aware of one of the assistants scribbling on a clipboard in her periphery. Fury licks up inside, mixed with the grief for him, for Mako, and she shouts, “Who did this?”_

_“You know,” says that corpse next to her and she whips around. Uncle Sokka lays there, blue eyes sunken and haunted, grinning unnaturally at her. She takes a step back, stumbles on a loose tile, the metal soles skidding without traction against the floor._

_She turns on her heel to go for the door, to call for backup, but finds the door has been blocked by four figures, one of whom is achingly familiar._

_Zaheer smiles cruelly as he advances toward her, staff drawn._

_“Hello, Chief Beifong.”_

.

.

. 

Lin wakes up in her hammock panting hard. It’s becoming a habit she absolutely despises. She slams a hand against the metal wall of the craft, half out of frustration, half to check for intruders.

Her seismic sense ripples through the ship, but there’s nobody here in this crew cabin.

It’s just her.

Her and the remnants of a nightmare she hasn’t had in years.

She sits up, hangs low in the sag of the hammock, trying to control her breathing. Zaheer had looked exactly how he had at trial, all those years ago. The trial she herself had guarded as Chief because of what had been at stake. 

She rubs her face and gets up, pulls on her boots and shin guards out of habit.

She isn’t craving but she goes to the galley to make tea anyway. With their course set and Asami at the helm, making tea is something to do. Maybe she should have listened to Kya after all, done meditation, or crystals, or breathing. Anything to quell her nightmares, let her get a good night’s sleep without having to rely on alcohol to get through.

No, she reminds herself as the kettle boils. None of that shit has ever helped her anyway.

.

.

.

Lin barely gets any sleep the rest of the night, tossing and turning fruitlessly on the bench on the bridge for a few hours while Asami flies overnight. Mako and Korra come in and out, talking to Asami quietly and occasionally turning on the radio to listen to the radio traffic coming in and out of the Southern and Eastern Air Temples.

They set down a valley outside Gaoling just after breakfast because Naga needs to stretch her legs and, apparently, so does Korra. Lin and Bolin stand in the shade, watching Korra airbend the ball practically into the stratosphere.

Lin anxiously taps her foot against the ground. They need to go.

She’s already putting them at risk stopping twice, but there are only certain cities that can handle an airship of their size. This unscheduled stop won’t do anything for their fuel reserves, but the longer Zaheer’s team has to poke around in Republic City, the longer they have to realize the Avatar isn’t where she should be.

There’s nobody here, of course. Korra is right. But she’d be a lot happier observing the picturesque scenery from above, where they only have to fear attack from the air. Here, by a river in the middle of the mountains, there’s more than enough ammunition for anybody, let alone Zaheer and his gang.

“We just got a call on the radio about another airbender,” Asami says excitedly, emerging with Mako from the ship.

Lin glances their way. Another one, huh?

“Finally!” Korra says excitedly. “Where are they?”

“A city called Zaofu,” Mako says.

Lin’s blood instantly runs cold. Did he just say—

“The home of the Metal Clan,” Mako continues, confirming what Lin had been dreading.

Zaofu.

Su.

And a new airbender Korra will want to pick up.

Scratch that, a new airbender Korra _is going_ to pick up.

She lashes out of Naga’s ball instead of killing Korra, because that would defeat the entire purpose of retrieving her in the first place. Spirits, why is she so _Korra_ about these situations?

And despite being thirty years older than her, Lin has to grit her teeth and go along with it because Korra outranks her. Which is patently ridiculous, but Lin’s life has never been fair.

Lin follows them back onto the airship, locking it up tight as Naga climbs into the hull, then climbs up to the bridge and watches as Asami plots a new course.

“We’ll refuel there instead of Gaoling,” Asami says cheerfully, and kicks the engines back up to start their ascent.

Lin stares at the chart on the wall in disbelief, and tamps down her slowly simmering anger.

Fuck her, she’s going to Zaofu.

She’s going to Su’s pretentious fucking city.

She’s going to have to stare at the platinum domes and spiraled architecture and see everything her little sister has accomplished, all because Korra feels the need to personally escort an airbender back to Republic City.

Lin is glad there isn’t a lick of alcohol on this ship, because if there had been, she would have drunk the ship dry.

She turns on her heel and goes to the galley to make her second cup of kěwàng chá for the day, and as she waits for the water to boil she tries not to think that Asami is piloting them to her certain doom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lin is making progress, but she's not quite done growing yet...
> 
> Su next chapter. See you then! 
> 
> If you enjoyed this chapter or it made you feel some kind of way, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.


	17. Game 2: Rose (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zaofu (part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The moment, at least according to the comments, that y'all have been waiting for.... I hope it lives up to your expectations!

She isn’t prepared for how  _ angry _ seeing Su in the flesh makes her.

She’s changed physically, and so has Lin, but her voice is as grating as it had been the morning she’d left. The morning she’d spent arguing with their mom back and forth about what she could or couldn’t take, until Toph had booted her out the door so she wouldn’t miss her train.

Zaofu looks like it belongs on a Solstice card, or etched into the gold leaf of a New Year’s envelope.

The news reels haven’t done it nearly enough justice. The city  _ is _ beautiful, nestled in its lush and verdant valley, where this close to the equator the season is just edging into spring instead of autumn like in Republic City. The mountains are dusted with a late snow despite the spring crops already well underway.

The city itself is modern and flashy, the domes large and impressive, glinting like the shields of an advancing army on their approach.

It screams luxury, reminds Lin of the ivory and silver inlays of the furniture in the houses of mob bosses she’s raided over the years. She can’t  _ not  _ think of Su’s past, how the Terra Triad hideouts, with their crisp lines and frame alcoves filled with marble columns, expensive bas-relief stuccos, intricately carved bamboo screens, lush wallpaper, and marble floors must have influenced her to build this monstrosity. The tall Art Deco skyscrapers shimmer in the midday sun like some sick alternative Republic City, of what Su was  _ supposed _ to have left behind when she went to live with their grandparents.

Instead, she’s built herself a second, classier version, and called it art.

The kids are impressed, ooo-ing and ah-ing at everything Su points out as they take the rail up to the Beifong estate, but to Lin, this city filled with tall spires of metal and glass is only ominous.

The estate is almost as ostentatious, palatial in size and extravagant in the extreme. From the views to the landscaping, everything here oozes wealth and power. It’s not gaudy, not flashy like the city proper, but it’s still more than anything has a right to be.

Lin hates it.

She takes some perverse sort of solace in the fact that her mom would probably hate it, too.

Su’s children look hauntingly like they had in Lin’s detox-mare, like the faces that stare up from her out of the cards she gets every year. She had hoped beyond hope that the new airbender wouldn’t be one of them, but the Universe, as always, has continued to give her the big ole middle finger.

The new airbender, her niece,  _ Opal _ or whatever her name is, is round-faced, optimistic, and green.

So, so green.

Everything about her screams naiveté, even more so than the other earthbending member of their party making moon eyes over her the entirety of dinner.

That makes her angry. It’s clear Su has sheltered her kids, just like their grandparents had sheltered their mom. The girl she sees in the garden has clearly never wanted for anything in her entire life, wouldn’t know how to protect herself if trouble came calling.

The boys in the arena had had skills, but it was all youthful exuberance and jocular athleticism, not the sort of bending ability one would need if attacked by four raving criminals.

And the artist…well.

Lin grimaces to herself. She could have broken him over her knee.

Her nieces and nephews—half-nieces, half-nephews, she reminds herself—know nothing of the outside world, of its dangers. All they know is opulence and leisure, their  _ highest potential _ crafted in Mommy’s dream city built from a hefty inheritance acquired from the coffers of Lao and Poppy Beifong.

It makes her sick.

Safest city in the world Lin’s ass.

That’s what they’d said about Republic City, and look what had happened.

By the time Su shows them to their guest quarters, after she has weaseled her way into Korra’s good graces and convinced her to stay, Lin’s hands are shaking with so much pent up rage she has to keep them balled into fists.

She slams the door to the guest house closed and finds her duffle bag set carefully on the coffee table.

Lin’s fist tightens.

There’s nothing about this place, nothing about Su and her parade of splendor, that doesn’t want to make her drink. She desperately wants to crack open a cold bottle of baijiu and let it take her stresses away.

Instead she goes to the bathroom, splashes her face with cold water, and tries not to stare at herself too long in the mirror.

Her hands are still shaking, she’s still craving, but there’s nothing in this guesthouse designed for serving food, so she sets out to find a damn tea set.

Su’s complex is of course brimming with staff, but Lin will be damned if she asks one of them for help. A stomp of her foot helps her find the room that she needs, full of people getting ready for the meal. 

She slinks the corridors down to the kitchen, growling at anybody who dares even look at her askance, and slips in the back. She taps her heel, finds the tea service, and goes to get it.

It’s as she bends open the cupboard that someone speaks.

“Hey, who’re you?”

She stands up and scowls at the man who dared to speak at her. He is large, with tattooed arms under his green and cream chef’s coat and a beaded beard. He looks like a criminal. Lin is not impressed.

He looks her up and down, takes in her uniform. “You the sister?”

She scowls, picks up the service tray, turns to go.

“You need hot water?” he asks, following after her. “We can do that.”

“I can manage myself,” she snaps back, and hip checks the kitchen door open, then stalks back to her guest quarters.

It’s only after she gets back that she realizes the tea service doesn’t have spark rocks, or any way to heat the water she gets from the tap.

Monkeyfeathers.

She slams the tea service down and is about to go all the way back to the airship to make tea when there is a knock on the door.

“What?” she asks irritably, but there is no response.

When she goes to open the door, there’s a tray waiting in front of her door. On it sits a piping hot teapot, a small burner, a set of spark rocks, and a note.

_ “You need anything else, just ask. –Li-Jun” _

She wrinkles her nose, but takes the tray in and makes tea anyway.

-/-

She doesn’t feel any better after tea, her nerves still jagged and her entire body vibrating in pure anxiety, so she goes on patrol.

Su might  _ say  _ Zaofu is the safest place in the world, but Lin manages the security of an entire city, a city five times larger than Su’s and with the population to match.

She’ll have the final say to Zaofu’s safety.

_ She’ll _ ensure that Korra is safe here, not Su’s paltry security force.

She walks the tiers of the Beifong estate, which is where she’ll keep Korra come hell or high water. Su really has spared absolutely no expense—the trees and shrubs are imported and clearly well-tended, not to mention incredibly expensive. The statuary is beautifully kept, waxed until it shines, or is freshly painted according to design and taste. The lighting fixtures on the bridge and along the path are hand crafted, the stonework on the columns and friezes meticulously carved. The buildings are masterfully constructed, with superb craftsmanship.

And then there is the dome.

Baatar and his son are talented, Lin gives them that. The petals to the dome are easily twenty yards wide and another forty yards tall at their height, and don’t have a single way in.

And wherever the hell Suyin got  _ that much platinum _ , let alone got it cast or molded, is beyond Lin.

It’s her though, to a tee: flashy, expansive, and artistic.

Lin wishes she could rip them down.

That wouldn’t do any good, because she would still be stuck with so much  _ green. _

Everything here is green. The walls, the terrazzo, the inlays—they’re all green, and they all have layers that have metal accents. Lin has never been attached to the color like Su, or her mother who couldn’t even  _ see it _ . Lin likes the greys and blacks of her police uniform, the crisp whiteness of her undershirt. But in Zaofu, everything is green and silver, and Lin  _ hates it. _

She’s a metalbender, for fucks sake, a descendant of a storied Earth Kingdom family. She never thought she’d hate metal or the color green more in her life, but here she is.

Guess that’s life just being her contrary fucking self.

Su catches up with her on her inspection, falling into step beside her like it hasn’t been thirty years and Lin’s entire being isn’t radiating enough leave-me-the-fuck-alone energy that all the guards immediately make themselves scarce when they see her coming.

“Lin,” her sister says, “are you  _ checking the perimeter?” _

The amusement, the  _ patronization,  _ in her voice grates on Lin’s nerves.

“Of course I’m checking the perimeter,” she spits, and ducks to check the edge of one of the petals.

“Whatever for?” Su asks. “This is the safest city in the world, I promise.”

There’s that phrase again.

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

Su raises an eyebrow. “Kuvira says you’ve been stalking the grounds for nearly two hours. Surely you’ve decided if it’s safe or not by now?”

Lin grits her teeth. “Don’t you have something better to be doing? Like messing around with your meteorites or—I don’t know—fettilating stamps or something.”

Her sister rolls her eyes. “Lin, I promise, nothing will happen. My security team is the best of the world, and Aiwei would feel any intruders before they could even make it inside. Korra is perfectly safe here, you have nothing to worry about.”

She growls and keeps walking. She doesn’t trust Su, doesn’t trust this system, or the people Su keeps to protect it.

Spirits, she wants a drink.

“Lin, I thought we could talk,” Su says. “No audience, no entourage of teenagers or my kids. Just the two of us.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Lin, please, can you stop being so stubborn and—”

“Because everything is always my fault, isn’t it?” Lin snaps at her. “Never yours, always mine. And they’re right! You know what will happen if Zaheer breaks into this dome and kidnaps Korra? It won’t be your fault. No, it will be mine. Now leave me alone and let me do my job.”

Su sighs, and the pity in her eyes makes Lin want to hit something.

“I see you’re still going to be this way,” she says. “Fine, I’ll let you pace the perimeter to your heart’s content. But take a break in an hour and come to dinner, please? I promise you won’t regret it.”

Lin scowls, but Su finally honors her request and leaves her along.

-/-

She doesn’t know why she got so angry at dinner.

Well, she does.

Su’s a filthy fucking hypocrite, and it drives Lin absolutely up the wall.

Su rails against the Earth Queen at dinner, but from what Lin sees, she’s not sure how Su is any different. She’s kept her kids trapped in her city in the name of protecting them, acts like they are free to go, but even her eldest is practically chained to his father’s hip.

The world might be evolving, but Su is so stuck in Zaofu that it’s a wonder she even knows the world is  _ turning. _

Lin barely touches her food. Everything is pretentious here, even the flatware. The cups are molded from solid aluminum, and even the chopsticks have been designed to be art.

And then  _ Varrick _ waltzes in.

Slimy.

Traitorous.

Criminal.

_ Varrick. _

The man who tried to get Mako framed for terrorism.

The man who nearly sunk Asami’s entire company.

The man who tried to kidnap the president and made her and her police force the largest fools in Republic City.

She won’t sit at a dinner table with her preachy sister and a  _ criminal _ while four of the most dangerous people in the world are tracking Korra like a goddamn dog to kidnap her, or worse.

So she leaves. And she makes sure to slam the door hard on the way out.

.

.

.

She brews her third cup of kěwàng chá for the day to try to keep from drinking and reads the paper to distract herself. She’s growing to tolerate the stuff, somehow, but still has to get the aftertaste out of her mouth by chugging two entire cups of water after.

It all sloshes around in her mostly empty stomach, but it helps keep the cravings, and her hunger, at bay.

She’s just about to sit down when something slides under the door.

She’s immediately on guard, but it’s just two pieces of paper. Telegrams. About the size of her palm, with green ink neatly typed on thick, cream paper.

The first one is from is from Saikhan:

_ 10-4 NAT-N MESSAGE= _

_ ZAHEER CONFIRMED IN CITY= _

_ 10-15 IMMEDIATELY= _

_ 10-87 AIR TEMPLE ISLAND= _

_ RCPD 10-23= _

_ 10-29H= _

_ S= _

It’s all business, which she appreciates. She’s not sure how Saikhan would manage to chew her out across thousands of kilometers and several time zones, but she wouldn’t put it past him.

It seems like Asami’s secretary had gotten him the message. She hopes the telegraph is just to throw Zaheer and his people off the scent, should they have managed to intercept the message. She will be taking Korra directly to the safe house, and will deal with what to do with Opal afterwards.

That is, of course, if Hui and Saikhan don’t kill her first.

She shuffles the note to the back and picks up the second. It’s on the same paper, written with the same ink, and is from the Order of the White Lotus.

_ ZAHEER INFILT. AIR TEMPLE ISLAND= _

_ ATTACKED KYA, FOUGHT= _

_ NO ACCOMPLICES, ESCAPED= _

_ MINOR/MODERATE INJURIES= _

_ EVAC TO NORTHERN AIR TEMPLE= _

_ RETURN WITH CAUTION, EMPANEL= _

The cable message is shaking in her hands by the time she finishes it. Zaheer had infiltrated and attacked Air Temple Island. He had fought Kya.

Of course he had fought Kya. Lin is certain she had recognized him immediately, is sure she unleashed all fifty-six years of her waterbending fury on him. Kya is just as skilled a fighter as she is a healer, but Lin can’t get past the growing pit in her stomach.

She has a hunch that there is more to the story than the cable lets on.

There almost always is more, of course. There’s only so much the operators could fit in a single message. But in this case she’s two days’ travel away, and she’s too far out of range to radio for clarification.

Well, she could radio, but like hell she is going to ask Su for the use of the Zaofu radio.

Besides, she is still mad at Kya.

Kya, who dared treat her like a foolish teenager and tell her how to do her job.

Lin throws the telegrams on the table, desperate not to think about her, and picks up the newspaper instead. It’s the evening edition of the Zaofu Chronicle, and she normally wouldn’t even bother, but considering how thick it is it  _ has _ to have  _ something  _ to distract her from thoughts of Zaheer, thoughts of Kya, and her spirits damned sister.

-/-

_ She wakes in the darkness. _

_ It’s so familiar at this point she knows what to expect. She grits her teeth, covers her ears, tries to block out Tenzin and Saikhan and Korra and Hui and all the others who call out for her in the darkness. _

_ And then the scream. _

_ “Lin!” _

_ She wrenches about. “Kya!” _

_ “Lin!” _

_ “Bumi!” _

_ “Lin!” _

_ The voice tugs at her heart, but she immediately starts running. “Su!” _

_ “Lin!” _

_ “Lin!” _

_ “Lin!” _

_ She runs, despite the fact she has never gotten anywhere, never goes anywhere, just runs and runs in the blackness until the floor shatters. The ground drops out from beneath her and she’s falling, falling, falling, stomach in her chest and heart in her throat until she hits water with a sickening smack. _

_ She sinks like a stone, gasping and drowning despite having been taught by Katara to swim. She’s not chained to anything, not even herself, but she can’t get buoyant. Maybe it’s because all of her bones are broken. Maybe it’s because she’s dying. _

-/-

She wakes in a cold sweat, which isn’t new either.

But this time it’s not her bed, or a detox bed, but it’s in her fucking sister’s guesthouse.

She wants to vomit.

She barely makes it to the bathroom before doing so, just managing to get it into the toilet bowl. She kneels there, coughing and gagging and spitting and trying to get the taste out of her mouth.

She glances at the clock in the bathroom and sees it is only just gone midnight.

It's barely been two hours since Opal and Korra had come in.

Barely been too hours since she’d cupped her cheek and allowed herself to cry at the Universe’s cruel and twisted fate for her.

Barely two hours since she had turned off all the lights and climbed into bed to keep herself from finding a bottle and drinking the entire thing.

Her stomach heaves and she vomits again, her gag echoing against the bowl followed quickly by the spatter of sick.

When it’s done, when she’s puked up all she can, she cradles her face in her hands, and the tears start anew.

Kya was right. She never should have come.


	18. Game 2: Rose (3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zaofu pt 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks always to Pasta for being an amazing beta. :)

She doesn’t sleep the rest of the night.

She paces the defenses with the rest of the guards, checks every nook and cranny and jumps at every shadow until the sun comes out and the domes open once more. Even that doesn’t cause her to unclench her jaw. She has no idea how long ago Zaheer was spotted in Republic City, and now that he’s an airbender, he has the power of air travel.

If he slipped out of Republic City unnoticed, he could be entering the city from above. Now that it’s daytime and the domes are open, she has to watch the skies, too.

She’s exhausted, running on only two hours of sleep, and has a massive headache. She’s never been this tense on a protection detail before and her neck is rock hard. But then again, she’s never had to protect someone of Korra’s caliber against a threat this large by herself.

In Republic City, she has her officers, has her system, has Saikhan and Hui and hundreds of other assets she can have at her fingertips at a moment’s notice. Here in Zaofu it’s just her--her and Su’s untested guard. They still use hip spools, for Kyoshi’s sake.

She’s effectively alone here, and she can’t trust anyone.

As the sun rises higher in the sky, bathing the valley in warm mid-morning light, a guard steps out of the patrol room and falls into step next to her just like Su had the day before.

“Good morning, Chief Beifong,” the guard says, and Lin recognizes the voice of the Guard Captain who had heeled at Su’s ankles from the docking platform back to the estate.

Lin scowls and ignores her.

The woman, whose name is Kuvira or something, asks, “Are our defenses to your satisfaction?”

“They’ll do,” she says flatly.

“My metalbenders are the best there are,” Kuvira says haughtily, and  _ Spirits how  _ the tone reminds her of Su. “You don’t have to worry about the Avatar’s safety while she’s in residence.”

“Is that so? Are you watching the sky?”

Kuvira nods. “And every entrance around the city, the underground passages and tunnels that connect the catacombs out of town. I have guards on the trains, the service corridors, and scouts in the valley. Additionally, Aiwei is lending his detection services around the estate as well.”

Lin curls her lip. “Your metalbenders are green.”

“My metalbenders are highly skilled fighters who train weekly for situations just like this.”

“Against all the elements, not just earth?” Lin demands, because she knows the type. She knows the lines Kuvira will feed her, because she’s had to feed them to politicians, too. Lin has been playing this game for longer than this girl has been alive. “How about against opponents like these?”

The guard captain sighs and stops as they come around the corner of the main house. “Chief Beifong, I grew up on this estate. I know how to protect it better than anyone. Please let me; I know how to do my job.”

_ But do your metalbenders? _ Lin thinks darkly, and she splits away from Kuvira and keeps patrolling without another word.

.

.

.

Lin doesn’t eat breakfast. She can’t stand to be in that room, to see Su’s face, see Korra, see Opal, see the rest of them. She can’t imagine eating in that cavernous room every day, shackled to a husband with five kids clinging to her pant legs. The thought makes her sick.

Instead, she stalks around the compound until she’s woozy and her head pounds even more.

There’s something wrong with her, and it’s not just because she’s running on two hours of sleep.

She’s not a healer, doesn’t know what a meridian line even  _ is  _ let alone where they fall, but even she can tell that there’s something wrong with her qi.

She’s quick to anger even though she hasn’t had a lick of alcohol in almost three weeks now.

The ground feels fuzzy and far away, the cables on her back and her armor even farther.

And this fatigue.

It’s not because of the lack of sleep, or the occasionally deleterious effects of perimenopause. Lin is used to those, used to long hours and the headaches and muscle aches and hot flashes those bring.

But this is different. This is manifesting as muscle spasms, shooting pains in her shoulders and neck. It’s not right.

Being here, being in Zaofu, while her city is under siege from the same criminals that are after Korra…

It’s fucking with more things than just her head.

So when Aiwei offers her the card, she takes it.

It’s what Kya would want her to do.

.

.

.

She remembers the stories Iroh told them as kids, about Uncle Zuko’s transformation in Ba Sing Se. How sick he had been, feverish and sweating and hallucinating for hours until it had finally passed.

She wonders if that’s happening to her, if this is some sort of delayed reaction to her detox. Her body, having run on adrenaline and spite for so long, is giving in to whatever the hell kind of blockage clearing the acupuncturist did to her.

She hates the memories, but hates the visions more.

She goes back.

.

.

.

It may have been thirty years since they last fought, but unlike the rest of her, Su’s bending style has changed.

She’s always been more reserved than Lin, the defense to Lin’s offense. But now that time has passed, Su fights more like a waterbender than an earthbender.

It reminds Lin of fighting Kya, the constant push and pull of Su’s movements and the graceful fluidity in the way she moves so unlike the earthbending Toph had taught them. She isn’t even trying, she isn’t  _ fighting back _ , and that only makes Lin angrier.

How  _ dare  _ Su talk about her break up with Tenzin when she wasn’t even  _ there,  _ when she was too busy traveling the world and making a city and popping babies out to give anybody in Republic City the time of fucking day. It was only after the city had been nearly complete, when Su was on her second kid, that she’d started sending out bragging New Years cards with gilded lettering, flowery language, and expensive baby photos.

The thought makes her so furious she hurls that idiot Huan’s statue at Su and finds something vaguely satisfying about the way it crunches into the wall.

While the waterbending-inspired moves are new, using her surroundings is not, so Lin is expecting the plates. She’s expecting the meteors, sort of, and is expecting Su to wrap the metal wall around her to protect herself.

It’s just as infuriating as it used to be.

Everything she throws at her gets deflected.

Lin moves in to attack again, but she’s too off balance, too angry, having too hard a time getting her qi to align right. She misses the second piece of wall whipping around until it slams into her, throwing her into the stairs hard enough to knock the wind out of her.

And it only takes a little pause for her adrenaline to leave her, and for her body to give up completely.

She blacks out before she can even register the fact that Su had finally begun to attack back.

.

.

.

Waking up with the glow of waterbending haloing her vision is getting old.

Only this time it’s not Kya, but a woman in Zaofu robes who pulls away before Lin can even really register her presence.

She hears Mako’s voice distantly, saying something with concern, and hears the woman’s confused response. She can’t focus on it, can’t focus on them or the ceiling or the way her body feels.

Instead, she lets the exhaustion reclaim her and she falls back asleep.

-/-

A day and a half later, a servant pops her head into the dining room almost as soon as Opal leaves to find her parents.

“Chief Beifong?”

Lin looks up. “Yes?”

“Assistant Chief Saikhan is on the radio for you upstairs.”

Lin blinks. “Your radio reaches all the way to Republic City?”

The servant nods. “I believe it’s urgent.”

She stands and follows her to the radio room. It may be just after noon in Zaofu, but with the time difference, it is coming up on evening in Republic City. She wonders what is so desperate that Saikhan is radioing her.

She swears if Saikhan has let the city crumble into ruin in her absence, she actually will take Su up on her offer to stay.

The Zaofu radio operator sits at a large radio in the corner of the room, taking messages beside a frantically working telegraph operator. As she walks in, he glances her way and reaches up on his board to flip a switch.

“Zaofu to RCPD, I have Chief Beifong. Standby one, over.” He pauses for a second to listen to the reply, then hands her the radio mic and a pair of headphones. Lin thinks with some smugness that the capacity of the RCPD radio room far outstrips Su’s, but she pushes the thought out of her mind and holds the microphone up.

“Zaofu to RCPD, this is Beifong.”

“Lin,” says Saikhan in relief, and she can  _ hear _ the stress in his voice. “Thank Spirits.”

“Report, Saikhan. What’s going on?”

“We’ve had sightings of the other members of the Red Lotus in Republic City since they attacked Air Temple Island,” he tells her.

“How recently?”

“Yesterday. They’re  _ here,  _ holed up somewhere in the city. I know it. We’ve set up a perimeter and are actively engaged in a manhunt, but so far, they’ve eluded us.”

She grimaces. Of course they are. Dammit. “Are you sure they’re still in the city?”

“Unless they’ve slipped past us, but the entire city is on red alert.”

Lin worries her bottom lip. It wouldn’t do to bring Korra straight into danger; the Red Lotus are in Republic City, no doubt waiting for her return. Perhaps they should just stay put. Or at least, Korra should stay put. She should really return to Republic City and oversee the hunt herself.

“I can be on the airship in an hour.”

“What about the Avatar and her friends?”

Lin hesitates. “My sister and I have…reached an understanding.”

There’s shocked silence from the other end of the radio.

“The airship is ready to go,” she continues on as if she hasn’t just stunned her second command. “I can leave immediately if necessary.”

“I—“ Saikhan stops, and she hears muffled voices that she can’t make out over the long distance connection. “Hold on, Chief.”

The line goes quiet, and Lin stares at the radio in bemusement.

“Lin I have to go,” Saikhan says suddenly, hurriedly. “There’s something going on on Kyoshi Bridge. I’ll telegram with more later.”

“Roger that,” she replies, and hands the radio back to the operator. She takes the headphones, passes them along, then goes off to find her sister.

She’s sure whatever is going on on Kyoshi Bridge is minor. The city hasn’t burned down yet, and she’s been gone almost a week. She trusts Saikhan to have it under control.

-/-

“Lin, wait.”

Lin turns and looks back at her sister. They’ve just finished seeing Opal off, which is a shame because Lin has come to the conclusion she isn’t so bad. A little naïve, sure, but with a head full of hope and a heart full of bravery. She thinks that kind of thinking will be beneficial amongst the new fledgling Air Nation, and fit right in with Tenzin.

“When we get back to the house, can we talk?” Su asks, and if Lin didn’t know any better, she would say she looked sad.

Sure, she had just sent her only daughter off into the world, but the reservation in Su’s eyes isn’t related to that.

“Sure,” she says with a shrug, and together they board the train back to Zaofu.

.

.

.

“How come you never taught Korra to metalbend?” is Su’s opening line as they step into her study and she closes the doors firmly behind them.

Lin raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize this would be an interrogation.”

“Oh lighten up, Lin,” Su says with a playful little punch on her shoulder. “Tea? Water? Something stronger?”

“Tea’s fine,” Lin replies warily, and takes in the high ceilings and bookshelves stuffed with artifacts on display. She unwittingly drifts towards them as Su sticks her head into the corridor to order a pot, and Lin picks up the earthen mask nestled amongst the trinkets and photographs. “Why do you have a sandbender mask?”

“It was mine when I lived in the desert,” Su says simply, and settles on one of the couches across from where she’s standing. “When I left the commune, I was allowed to take it with me.”

Lin remembers, vaguely, a story Kya had told her once when they’d run into each other at a bar years ago. Back when she used to drink. “Is this the same commune you lived in with Kya?”

Su’s smile is bright. “So you did keep tabs on me.”

“Not willingly,” Lin tells her, and sets the mask back on the bookshelf. She looks at all the other trinkets; a framed photo of a pirate ship, emerald and gold jewels spilling out of a display case, and a statuette of the Painted Lady. And those are just the ones she recognizes. There are dozens of others, along with books and books of travel journals and scrapbooks.

She’s missed a lot, being out of Su’s life for so long.

But then, there’s a lot about her own life that Su has missed, too.

“Come on, Lin,” her sister says, and she gestures at the other couch. “Sit down.”

Lin glances, uncertain, but takes a seat. The couch is surprisingly firm, but the fabric cover is plush and soft. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“I just hoped we could…talk. You know, without you throwing rocks at my head.”

Lin rolls her eyes. “I already said I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know.”

A servant pops in with a tea tray and sets it on table with a nervous glance at Lin, then skitters back out as if she’s afraid of her. Lin still can’t believe Su has servants. Well she can; Su’s always liked to boss people around.

“Do you still like longjing?” her sister asks, picking up a tin of leaves.

She nods.

Su smiles, then carefully tips tea leaves into a strainer, then dunks it into the tea pot and leaves it to steep.

“All these servants and you still brew your tea yourself?”

“I do when it’s for my sister.”

Lin scoffs and leans back into the couch as much as her armor will allow. Su gives a wry little smile and sits back as well, and Lin realizes they’ve unintentionally mirrored each other. She wrinkles her nose and crosses her legs.

“I’m serious though, Lin. Why didn’t you ever teach Korra how to metalbend?”

“I do have a city to run, you know.”

“As if I don’t?” Su asks with a laugh. “I still found the time.”

Lin rolls her eyes instead of getting mad.

“If Korra had asked you, would you have? She certainly has the knack for it.”

“I hate teaching at the academy. Why would Korra be any different?”

“Yes, Mako told me how you take cadets down a peg every year.”

“They deserve it,” Lin says, half-gruffly, half-defensively.

“Is that so?”

“As if you wouldn’t do it, too, if you were in my position.”

“Me? A cop? We both know how disastrous that would have been.”

“Yes, you would have had to give up your life of crime.”

Su rolls her eyes.

“You know I can’t even remember their names?” she asks as she leans forward to remove the strainer and pour the tea. “After all that.”

“I wish I was so lucky,” Lin grumbles, but accepts the cup of tea Su offers. She sips it, and finds Su has managed to learn how to brew a decent cup over the years. “They’ve stayed on my radar since you left.”

Su sits back with her tea and a tiny frown. “Are they in prison?”

“Shang is dead,” she informs her. “He was killed ten years ago by the Red Monsoons in a turf dispute. Li is, as far as I know, still with the Terras.”

There’s a carefully guarded look in Su’s eyes that she can’t quite read. “Is he now?”

Her voice is even, inscrutable. Lin frowns. “Su…”

“I’m not,” she says, airily waving off her concern in a way Lin doesn’t buy. “He was just…a friend once.”

Lin lets off a soft huff and rests her elbows on her knees, sipping her tea quietly. Su really has gotten much better at brewing, and as she savors the taste of the good leaf she stares at the model of Zaofu laid out on the table.

It is of the city, that much is indisputable, but the model has extra domes and spires she hadn’t seen from the air. She realizes it is the physical, life-sized city that’s incomplete—Su and Bataar’s plans for their city, practically a sixth child, are laid out before her.

She gestures at the model. “Did your husband make this?”

“Bataar?” Su asks, and the way she smiles when she thinks of him is enough to make Lin claw her eyes out. She’s sure she never smiled like that after fifteen years with Tenzin—let alone the twenty-something Su and her husband have been together. “Yes, he made that model.”

Lin can see the love and care that has gone into it; the carefully cut lines in the metal—cut, not bent, the way pieces have been expertly soldered together. Despite seeming like a slightly harried pushover, Lin cannot deny Su’s husband is a good designer.

So she nods and just looks at the model, looking at the tram station that has undoubtedly been redesigned a hundred times since he made the one that sits before her. He’s clearly patient, an even thinker. That’s good for Su; she needs someone to reign her in.

“So are you…” her sister starts after a long stretch of silence, “…seeing anyone?”

Lin scoffs. She can’t help it. Of all the damn questions Su would ask, of course it would be that one. “Really?”

“It’s a legitimate question!”

Lin rolls her eyes and leans back. “No.”

“Really? No-one since you’ve broken up with Tenzin?”

“I’ve been busy,” Lin says flatly, unwilling to say anymore. They might be reconciled, sort of, but Lin isn’t about to let her in that deep. Su doesn’t need to know, and she’ll have to do a lot more than issue a half-hearted apology at the foot of their mother’s statue to learn anything more than just surface-level information.

The sister in question sighs from across the table, resting her cheek on her hand. “I just thought—I hoped you might be hiding someone from me. Someone from the world. A nice guy or girl who makes you happy. Is there really no one?”

She wrinkles her nose at the very idea. “I don’t need a person to be happy.”

“No, you don’t, but it helps,” she says, and stands and drifts towards her desk. “I’m going to pour some wine. Do you want some?”

Spirits does she.

And wouldn’t it be ironic if Su was the one to break her again?

But she thinks of Kya, thinks of their fight on the docks, and tightens her fingers around her tea cup. No, she won’t. She won’t prove Kya right. “I’ll pass.”

“Are you sure?” Su says as she drifts behind her desk and pulls a bottle of chrysanthemum wine from Agni knows where.

“Yes.”

Su shakes her head and pulls a pair of glasses from her desk and waggles one at her. “Oh, come on, just a little.”

Lin grits her teeth. It’s just like Su to push. “I said  _ no _ .”

Her sister blinks, and slowly sets the glasses down. “Since when have you willingly said no to alcohol?”

Lin doesn’t like her tone. “I’ve changed a lot in the last thirty years.”

“But not that much.” Su’s staring at her with the same look Toph did when one or both of them was trying to hide something from her. And Lin  _ is  _ trying to hide something, but Su doesn’t know that and Su can’t read her heartbeat.

At least, Lin doesn’t think she can.

“It’s also not like you to lie about injuries,” Su says slowly, “or let your people lie about them for you.”

Lin glares at her, but a pit of dread forms in her stomach like a stone.

Su can’t know. She  _ can’t. _

“Mako said you were out for two weeks after Harmonic Convergence with a back injury.”

Lin takes what she hopes is a subtle breath and runs her tongue along the inside of her teeth as she tries to think cleanly. Su’s been poking around. Of fucking course she has. Neither of them trust each other anymore, not further than they can throw each other.

“When did he say this?”

“When we called a healer to look at you after you collapsed,” her sister says sharply. “You know, after you attacked me.”

She grits her teeth, not rising to the bait.

“He was worried you might have aggravated the injury when you fell. He said you spent those two weeks on Air Temple Island with Kya.”

“I did,” she allows slowly. It had been all over the news. Su would be able to find it if she went looking.

Su places her hands on her hips like a challenge. “Then why couldn’t my healer find any trace of an injury when she was looking you over?”

Shit.

“Kya’s good.”

“But not that good.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I’ve been healed by her! I’ve watched her heal others! I lived with her for two years, remember?”

Lin had forgotten. They’d just been talking about it and she’d forgotten. Fuck. She clenches her jaw, holds on tight to her cup, and doesn’t respond.

“You can’t bullshit me, Lin,” Su snaps, coming around the desk. “I’ve got five kids. I know when I’m being lied to.”

“Who is lying?”

“You!”

“So you don’t need a truthseer after all.”

“Not when it’s my sister.” Su comes over, and leans pointedly on the back of her couch. Lin understands in that moment this is the real reason Su wanted to speak with her. She’d been waiting to ambush her, the little rat. “I’m not an idiot, Lin. You’re a recovering alcoholic, aren’t you?”

Lin closes her eyes and exhales.

Fuck.

If Su had figured it out so quickly, that means others would, too.

“You are, aren’t you?” Su asks when she doesn’t respond. “How long?”

“I—”

“How long, Lin?”

Lin sighs and puts her cup down rather forcibly on Su’s coffee table. 

“Lin—”

“Eighteen years.”

Su’s eyes get wide. “You’ve been sober for eighteen years?”

Lin lets out an involuntary bark of laughter. She can’t help it. That old her, those years before Amon, feels like eons ago. “I was.”

Su frowns. “You…were?”

“I relapsed.”

“When?”

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it  _ matters _ ,” Su exclaims, and comes around the couch with a horrified expression. “Are you okay? Do you need to go to rehab?”

“What do you think my time on Air Temple Island was?” Lin snaps, feeling cornered and trapped. This isn’t like when Hui and Saikhan found her, brought her back to her apartment, forced her to detox under the care of a healer. It was different with them; she trusted them, they genuinely cared. Still care. 

Su is different. She has no idea what Su will do with this information. 

“Lin—”

Her hackles immediately go up. “I don’t want to—”

“Spirits, I can’t even look at you like this,” Su says with exasperation, sitting down and gesturing at her in frustration. “Just take the damn armor off so I’m actually talking to my sister, and not the Chief of fucking Police.”

Lin stares at her.

“I’m serious, Lin. I want to talk to my sister about her alcoholism, not my mother.”

Silence passes between them, but finally Lin stands and bends off her gauntlets and chest piece. She lets them fall to the ground, then sits and crosses her legs and arms.

Su observes her for a second, then pours them both new cups of tea. 

Silence stretches between them.

“I wouldn’t have offered you wine if I had known,” Su finally says, and hands her back her cup.

Lin takes the tea and says nothing. She could barely discuss this with Kya. Why the hell would she want to discuss it with Su?

“Mom has problems with alcohol, too,” her sister says softly.

Lin does a double take. Had she heard her right? “Mom—”

The wail of a siren cuts her off, followed quickly by an explosion. Both women jump to their feet, and Su rushes to the window.

“What is it?” Lin asks, jostling for position beside her.

Su puts an arm out to stop her and points at the door instead, fear in her eyes. “They’ve got Korra.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of my favorite chapters. If you like what you read, please consider leaving a comment!
> 
> Also, next chapter? Next chapter we dial the pining up to 11. ;)


	19. Game 2: White Lily (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lin plods through a desert, plots murder, and does some battlefield first aid. Among other things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would apologize for the pining, but you know I'm not sorry. ;)
> 
> Beta, as always, by the amazing Linguni.

The next week passes in a blur.

She spends three days of it trucking through the Si Wong Desert, plotting the ways she will kill Korra once she finds her. After she kills Korra, she’ll kill Su for lying to her. For letting Korra go, for  _ enabling _ Korra to leave like she did.

The thought of Su using Korra for her own selfish gain makes her grind her teeth so hard her jaw aches. Lin can’t believe she ever thought she could trust her sister again.

She supports Su in the hunt for Opal, and then she does something absolutely, stupidly reckless.

And then Su saves her life.

And then Zaheer escapes with Korra, and they punch a hole through a mountain to save the airbenders, and she helps Bumi out of the cave because she can’t look at Kya’s bruised and battered body and not think about their fight.

By the time they save Korra and imprison Zaheer and Su’s metalbenders are getting the airship ready to take passengers, she’s craving a drink so badly her hands are shaking. But she’s not got any tea left, so she grabs the first aid kit to take her mind off it and makes her way over to where Bumi is leaning against a rock.

“Don’t,” he groans as she approaches. “Kya’s worse than me.”

She ignores him and pops open the kit, pulling out supplies.

“Lin—”

“I heard you,” she says, and starts splinting his clearly broken arm. She doesn’t want to, but she glances over in Kya’s direction-- she can’t help it--where Jinora is seated next to her, holding her hand and talking to her to keep her awake. Lin swallows thickly, then turns back to carefully tying the makeshift sling supporting Bumi’s arm.

“Try not to move it,” she tells him sternly, and he rolls his eyes. She takes that as a good sign; he still has enough energy to do so.

“Kya now.”

She hesitates.

“She’s not mad at you,” Bumi tells her, as if reading her mind, and it’s only that affirmation that spurs her to finally pack up the kit and drift over (although she would never, ever admit it).

Jinora looks up at her and smiles as she arrives. “Oh good. You have the first aid kit.”

Lin nods and settles down wordlessly on her knees beside them, trying and failing not to get emotional.

“Hi, Lin,” Kya says quietly.

Lin clears her throat past the sudden blockage and busies herself with unsnapping the first aid kit’s metal clasps.

“I’m going to help Daddy,” Jinora says, and plunges her hands into the kit for gauze and rubbing alcohol before trotting off towards where her father is leaning heavily against a bison.

Lin swallows and picks out the last roll of bandages, and looks at Kya to try to determine what is the worst off. Nothing is obviously gushing blood, and there are no compound fractures or bones where they aren’t supposed to be. That’s good.

“She’s just like him,” the waterbenders murmurs from where she’s staring fondly after Jinora.

Lin glances after her, then shakes her head.

“I beg to differ,” she disagrees as she pulls a strip of metal off the bottom of her armor to use as a splint for Kya’s badly bruised and swollen ankle. “That girl’s all Pema.”

Kya chuckles, then coughs, and cries out at the pain it causes. She tries to push herself up, but Lin grabs her shoulder and nudges her back insistently.

“Don’t.”

“Oh, you’re the healer now?” Kya asks weakly, but leans back without much fight.

“Someone has to be,” Lin grumbles, curving the metal strip down and around Kya’s ankle to support it. It’s definitely broken, and her tibia might be, too. “Zaheer dropped our only one off a cliff.”

Kya doesn’t laugh, but a smile tugs up her lips and Lin counts that as a win. She carefully finishes the splint, then oh-so-carefully pats up Kya’s body, checking for breaks. Kya’s breath hitches as she checks her ribs.

“I think you’ve broken a rib,” Lin says quietly, hovering her hand over the spot. She can’t bear to cause Kya any more pain. “Right here.”

“That’s it?”

Lin hesitates. She  _ isn’t _ a healer—she has no idea how to check for internal bleeding. But she can check for shock, so she fishes for Kya’s wrist and takes her pulse, feels it beating hard under her warm skin.

“Put my feet up,” Kya murmurs, and Lin swears softly to herself. Of course, right, she’s so stupid. Forgetting basic first aid protocol like a rookie. She immediately pulls up a block of earth under Kya’s feet, then bends off the top plates of her armor and hurriedly unties her haidate from her waist.

“What are you  _ doing? _ ” the waterbender asks as she watches her.

Lin pulls off the fabric and carefully folds the thick canvas together before draping it over Kya’s torso. “Supposed to cover you.”

Kya does smile there, nods in approval, and she reaches out for Lin’s hand. Lin swallows, looks around to make sure everyone is busy preparing for their departure, then takes it. Kya squeezes it weakly.

“Why is it so heavy?”

“I—there’s gold thread sewn in between. For slashing cuts.”

“Makes sense,” Kya murmurs, then closes her eyes.

Lin panics. “I—aren’t I supposed to keep you awake?”

“You are,” Kya confirms, and opens her eyes again. “Tell me how Jinora is like Pema.”

Lin settles back on her haunches and looks over to where together mother and eldest daughter are fussing over Tenzin’s scrapes and cuts. She gestures with her free hand towards them. “Need I say more?”

“Lin,” calls Su’s voice, and she looks up to see her little sister jogging up. She quickly drops Kya’s hand before Su can notice. “Lin, we’ve got Korra on board. Also—hi, Kya.”

“Hi, Su.” Kya smiles tiredly. “Been a while.”

“It has,” Su says gently. “I don’t think you should try to walk on your ankle. Mind if Lin and I bend you up?”

Kya nods her acquiescence, so Lin bends her armor back on and together the two sisters stomp the earth and bend a slab under Kya. They carefully maneuver her up the gangplank and into the room Su’s metalbenders have quickly formed from scrap metal. Bumi is already there, slumped in a seat someone has bent out of the wall.

“Hey there,” he greets tiredly.

“This is going to weigh the ship down,” Lin warns as they start to settle the slab.

“No it won’t,” Su says, and as it touches the ground she bends the earth into dust. She lowers Kya gently to the ground, then bends the dust out the window.

It’s an impressive move, Lin will give her that. 

“Nice work.”

Her sister smiles at the compliment, then gets back to business. “We’ll be leaving shortly. I’m having the pilot plot a course for Agna Qel'a.”

Lin nods. It makes sense; it’s closer to the Northern Water Tribe than it is to Republic City, and Korra needs immediate attention. Not to mention the health of the two battered siblings in this room and Tenzin, wherever he is.

“Do they know we’re coming?”

Su shakes her head. “When Ghazan destroyed the temple, he destroyed the radio that relays to the Tribe. We’ll have to wait until we’re in range.”

Damn.

“Miss Sato might be able to jury-rig something.”

“I’ll talk to her,” Su promises. “Can you stay here? I’ll send someone as soon as I can spare them?”

“It’s fine,” she says with a wave of her hand. “This is your ship.”

“You two are getting along surprisingly well,” Bumi says suspiciously from his perch. “I thought you hated her guts.”

Lin sighs, and settles down on the floor between him and Kya, stretching out her bad leg and leaning back against the metal wall of the airship. “It’s a long story.”

-/-

_ “Lin? Lin Beifong, is that you?” _

_ Lin looks up from the bar, where she’d been nursing her bottle of Tsingtao. Not her usual, but she’d felt like branching out. Kya is standing beside her, looking shocked at her presence here at this dark bar where mostly women clientele slow dance to a jazz band on the dance floor the size of a postage stamp. _

_ “Kya?” she asks dumbly. _

_ “Is it you!” Kya exclaims, and immediately throws her arms around Lin for a hug. “How  _ are _ you, Lin?” _

_ Lin stiffens at the public contact and awkwardly pats at her back. “I didn’t realize you were back in town.” _

_ “Just came in yesterday,” the elder woman says, pulling back and boxing Lin on the shoulder gently. “Bumi’s not due in ‘till tomorrow, so I called up some friends and we were going to meet up here. Thery’re not here yet, but you are! You know this is a lesbian bar, right?” _

_ “I had no idea,” Lin replies sarcastically, and picks up her bottle and takes a swig, arching her eyebrow as high as it will go. _

_ Kya laughs and slides onto the empty stool beside her. She looks good, with her long brown hair braided differently than the last time Lin had seen her and a few strings of fired clay beads from the Fire Nation woven into hair and worn along her robes in styles traditional to some parts of the Earth Kingdom. Her colorful robes are clearly hand woven, thick and warm in a way that suggests she’s been spending time in colder climates but not cold enough to need a parka. _

_ Lin hasn’t seen Kya in almost four years, but remembers Aang saying something about Kya sailing the ancient atolls east of the Patolla Mountains. Before she can ask, or even figure out a way to formulate the question, the bartender approaches from the other side of the bar. _

_ “Hey Kya,” Tama greets cheerfully, and slides a shot of fire soju over the glass-worn bar without prompting. “Welcome back to Republic City.” _

_“Hey, Tam! Cheers.” Kya takes the shot and salutes her before downing it enthusiastically. Then she turns to Lin and says accusatorily, “How_ have _you been? Tenzin said you got promoted to Lieutenant. Congratulations!”_

_ Lin wrinkles her nose; the very reason she’s here. “Yes.” _

_ “And?” _

_ “I’m in charge of Turtleduck Gardens.” _

_ “Is that good?” _

_ “It’s been fine,” Lin lies, and tips back the rest of her bottle to down it in one go. _

_ Kya doesn’t look convinced, and leans on the bar with a smug expression. “If it’s so good, why are you here drinking in a lesbian bar on a Tuesday night?” _

_ Lin doesn’t deign to respond. She sets her bottle on the wooden surface of the bar with a clack and considers ordering another. _

_ Tama the bartender comes back over and slides a bottle of hot sake—and two cups—over the bar. Lin watches as Kya shoots her a grateful smile before pouring first one cup, and then the other. _

_ “Is that bad, then,” Kya asks as she slides the second cup over to Lin, “being in charge of Turtleduck Gardens?” _

_ Lin recognizes the question as a prying one, Kya obviously trying to get her to open up and talk about her feelings. “I don’t want to talk about it.” _

_ “Maybe I can help?” _

_ “You can’t,” Lin growls, and sips at the sake. It’s shitty, lesbian bar quality sake, but that’s about on par with her mood right now anyway. “I just had to be away from  men .” _

_ Kya bursts out laughing, so loud and hard that for a moment it seems that everyone in the room stops and stares in their direction. Lin wants to die, and shrinks back into herself until the room loses interest. Kya finally surfaces, wiping tears of joy from her cheeks with the meat of her palm. _

_ “Spirits, I haven’t laughed like that in months,” she giggles, and tops Lin’s cup of sake off. “If you’re here to ignore men, you’re in the right spot. S’long as you don’t mind women coming on to you in that armor of yours because,  _ damn _ , Beifong. You should be on a recruitment poster.” _

_ She scoffs. “I look better with it off.” _

_ “Is that an invitation?” _

_ “Gross, Kya. I’m dating your brother.” _

_ Kya smiles, wide and happy. “You’re also an infant. I don’t rob the cradle.” _

_ Lin rolls her eyes. “Okay, grandma. How’s thirty-three? Had your third mid-life crisis yet?” _

_ The waterbender reaches over and shoves her playfully. “Spirits, you’re savage. I’ve missed you.” _

_ “You make it too easy,” Lin intones, then downs the rest of her sake glass and slides off her stool. _

_ “Leaving already?” _

_ Lin knows when she’s had enough. She pulls her wallet out of her pocket and throws a few bills on the bar, enough for both her drinks and Kya’s. _

_ Kya pouts. “Well, don’t be a stranger. You’re invited to dinner on Friday.” _

_ “I know,” Lin says, because she always goes to dinner on the island on Fridays, and tucks her bifold back into her pants. Tama comes over to count the bills and holds up the extra ten yuan bill questioningly. She waves it off and inclines her head towards Kya. “Keep the change, Tama.” _

_ “You got it, Beifong. Thanks for comin’ in.” _

_ Kya turns around with an incredulous expression. “So you come here  _ regularly _?” _

_ Lin rolls her eyes for the second time in almost as many minutes and grabs her Lieutenant cap off the bar. “Good  _ night _ , Kya.” _

_Kya rolls her eyes right back. “See you later,_ Lieutenant _.”_

_ Lin flips her off on her way out the door. _

-/-

“Lin? Lin!”

Lin jolts awake, startled into consciousness by her name being called. She looks around wildly, and finds that it’s still daylight outside. Or at least a facsimile of daylight outside. This far north, this deep into their summer, she has no idea if it’s actually daytime or not.

She looks up to see Su standing above her on the bench she had been given to sleep on. “What time…?”

“Almost gone three.”

So she’d only been asleep for an hour and a half, barely enough time for a single cycle of REM. No wonder she’s woozy. Lin grimaces and sits, blinking the sleep out of her eyes. “What, Su?”

“We’re about to land in Agna Qel'a. Can you go back and relieve Kuvira? I need her to meet Desna and Eska.”

She nods. “ETA?”

“Five minutes.”

She’d better get to it then, Lin stands, feeling the battle from the day in her muscles. She half-hobbles, half-walks to the hastily constructed sickroom where they had bought Bumi and Kya.

Kuvira’s leaning against the wall where Lin had sat earlier, speaking softly to Kya about something. She’s not sure what, but Kuvira clams up the second Lin arrives, so she figures the conversation is about Su.

“You’re dismissed,” she says stiffly. “My sister needs you.”

“We’ll talk later,” Kya tells Kuvira, and she nods, stony-faced, before pushing past her and out the door.

Lin swallows at suddenly being alone with them. It hadn’t been a problem earlier, when they were all coming off the adrenaline high of battle and escape, but now with weariness in her bones it’s a different story. It’s jarring to see Kya there on the floor in her tattered clothes, so broken and battered after seeing her so alive and young in her dream not minutes earlier.

She clears her throat. “Still alive?”

“Still alive,” Bumi confirms in exhaustion. “Can we sleep yet?”

Lin shakes her head and watches as the capital of the Northern Water Tribe materializes out of the hazy summer mist that cloaks the city. As they get closer, she sees the twin Chieftans waiting with a veritable army of attendants and others who had responded to their hail.

“Quite the welcoming committee,” she murmurs.

Within seconds of their landing and hearing the gangplank lower, she hears instructions being shouted and feels the vibrations of people entering the airship, stopping to talk to someone at the front, then coming down the hall and splitting up amongst the rooms.

Two healers come into theirs, a man and a woman who size up the three occupants of the room and immediately split themselves between Bumi and Kya.

“Well, well, well,” says the woman who drops down to her knees next to Kya, “look what the polar-bear dog drug in. How’s it going, Kya? Is it true you fell off a cliff?”

Kya groans softly. “Shut up, Arnaaluk.”

“Is that any way to talk to the woman who is about to stem your internal bleeding and save your life?” Arnaaluk, because that is apparently her name, asks as she immediately pulls water onto her hands and starts to run them up and down Kya’s torso to check for damage.

Kya rolls her eyes, but winces as Arnaaluk finds something.

“Fractured right scapula, but no aortic tears or spinal fractures that I can find,” the healer says conversationally to Kya as she works before looking up at Lin and smiles at her. “I’m Healer Arnaaluk, by the way. I’m assuming from the scowl and the scars you’re Lin Beifong?”

Lin feels her eyebrow twitch. Her reputation precedes her, even this far north. “You know each other.”

“Of course. Kya’s got a girl in every port,” Arnaluuk, looking down at her fellow waterbender. “Don’t you?”

“Oh fuck off,” Kya murmurs weakly, “I’m the injured one.”

“Just means I’ve got you in one place for longer,” Arnaaluk jokes, and her glowing hands settle over Kya’s ribs. She pauses to diagnose the injury and says with a grin, “You broke  _ three  _ ribs on this side, you overachiever.”

If Lin didn’t know any better, she’d say Arnaluuk was flirting with Kya. She’s Kya’s type, based on what she’s gleaned of Kya’s romantic life over the years, with large broad shoulders and a round, masculine face.

She doesn’t have time for this. She’s hungry and she’s got a headache from the long day—even with the nap, which hadn’t really helped, she’s been going almost thirty six hours.

“And the ankle,” Kya says, “can’t forget the ankle.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Arnaluuk says, then looks up at Lin. “Madame Beifong said you treated them both on the scene?”

Lin is sure Su loved  _ that _ honorific, but decides to keep it to herself. “Yes.”

“Have you given them any medication?”

Lin has to think about how many hours it has been since she helped them both take something for their pain. “Dosed both of them with willowbark about three hours ago.”

“No wonder you’re so chatty,” Arnaluuk says to Kya, then calls over her shoulder to the other healer, “both have willowbark on board.”

“Got it,” he responds, not looking up from Bumi.

Arnaluuk hums and moves her hands over Kya’s middle, brow furrowing momentarily in concentration. “You actually don’t have as much internal bleeding as I feared. Almost none.”

“Lucky fall.”

“You’re one lucky polecat, that’s for sure.”

Lin is saved from having to say anything more by the arrival of several more healers carrying stretchers and neck braces. Lin stands around uselessly as the new healers—who  _ also  _ all seem to know Kya—carefully begin to prepare Bumi and Kya for transport.

“Go with Bumi,” Kya tells her as Arnaluuk carefully begins to fit her with a neck brace made of woven strands of sinew, hide, and bones.

“Are you sure?” Lin asks.

“I’ll be fine.”

Arnaluuk smiles up at her. “I’ll take good care of her, Chief Beifong.”

Lin hesitates, unsure why that rankles her so much but the other two healers have already picked up Bumi and are on the way out the door. “I’ll find you later,” she tells them sternly, then follows after Bumi’s stretcher.

She steps out of the airship into the biting cold of the north. Sure, it’s summer, but that doesn’t mean it’s not  _ cold.  _ It goes right through her armor, the metal almost instantaneously sapping the warmth from her skin. By the time they make it to Agna Qel'a’s main hospital, her teeth are chattering, and she wishes she had the fur the healers had draped over Bumi before they had left.

She doesn’t expect to go any farther than the waiting room, but the healers gesture for her to follow them deep into the hospital. They go right for a healing pool, and ease Bumi in by gently lowering the stretcher into the water.

“C-Cold,” Bumi complains, and the female healer smiles apologetically and twists her arms to presumably heat up the water.

The male healer who had followed Arnaluuk onto the ship turns to Lin and introduces himself. “I’m Healer Nakivat.”

“Lin Beifong.”

He bows to her the Northern way and she bows back. “Please, allow me to check you for injuries.”

“Me?” she asks in surprise. “I’m fine.”

“Please allow me to make sure.”

She’s too tired to argue. She bends her armor off and takes a seat in a patient room nearby, letting him run water-covered hands over her aching muscles, checking for fractures and torn muscles and internal damage.

“You’re a bit dehydrated,” he finally pronounces, “but nothing else that won’t heal naturally after a night of rest.”

As she had figured.

“You have some lingering muscle tension here?” he asks, passing over her shoulders and neck. “Perhaps manifesting as a headache? I can—”

“No,” she says gruffly. “It will go away.”

Healer Nakivat nods and takes his hands off her, bending the water away into a basin.

“Shall I call someone to show you to the Palace?” he asks as she puts her armor back on. “Your friend—”

She shakes her head, cutting him off. “I’ll wait for him.”

“It might be some time—”

“I’ll wait,” she repeats.

He hesitates, then offers up, “There’s a waiting room nearby. I can bring you some water?”

She nods. “Thank you.”

Healer Nakivat shows her into a room with a few low, backless couches and no windows. She settles onto one of them and accepts the pitcher of water and glass he brings her. She pours herself a glass, hating the fact that she wishes it was baijiu or beer, and takes a sip.

It’s refreshing in the way her first glass of water after detox was. She fights the urge to gulp it, fights the urge to think of Kya, and sets it down on the nearby side table. She runs a hand, slick with condensation, across her brow, wishing it would take away the headache. She should have let Nakivat heal her like he had offered.

She sighs, turning her head to and fro to crack her neck and try to alleviate some of the tension. It cracks, but doesn’t do much good. She huffs and leans back, closing her eyes. She probably should try to sleep, but she’s too worked up.

It had taken her ages to get to sleep on the airship, only bone-deep exhaustion finally pulling her away from the images of how Kya and Bumi had looked. Of the way her brain took her knowledge of the Northern Air Temple and tried to image which balcony had been the end, what the fight had looked like that finally tumbled them over the edge, and what their must have looked like sprawled at the bottom of the cliff when the Red Lotus had scooped their broken bodies from the ground and taken them to be in chains with the others.

The thought makes her nauseous, how close Bumi and Kya came to death.

How if they had fallen any differently, hadn’t had Bumi’s airbending or the scrubby mountainside to break their fall, it could have been their spines that had shattered, or they could have collapsed a lung, or punctured an organ, and how they might have bleed out before they could have gotten them to Agna Qel'a.

She sees injury, death, and dismemberment every day. It doesn’t usually bother her, at least, it hadn’t until Amon had shown himself and brought all her repressed thoughts rushing to the forefront.

Now she’s not sure what bothers her more; the extent of their injuries, or the fact that it had been Bumi and Kya.

“Chief Beifong?”

A voice breaks her out of her thoughts, and she opens her eyes to see Arnaluuk on the doorway with a tray.

She immediately sits up straighter. “What?”

“Kya said I should probably bring you this,” the healer replies, and brings the tray over to the table. She sets it down and Lin leans forward suspiciously; she only has to take a short whiff to know what it is. Muted meat markets and kelp; kěwàng chá.

“Dammit, Kya,” she swears softly, and Arnaluuk laughs.

“How long has it been since your last dose?”

Too damn long, but Arnaluuk doesn’t need to know that. Lin scowls and doesn’t answer, only taking the cup and tossing it back like she had learned to do. She grimaces as it goes down, and Arnaluuk hands her her water glass. She sets both cups pointedly back on the table and leans back, pressing her lips together.

Even after swearing off taking care of her, even after their fight, even half-dead and probably submerged in a healing pool, Kya is still looking after her.

Spirits alive. And what does that make her?

Lin rubs at her headache again. Arnaluuk shakes her head and joins her, sitting in the chair on the other side of Lin’s side table.

Her scowl deepens. Like hell she wants this woman here while she waits for Bumi. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

“Not anymore. Not allowed to work on former romantic partners,” Arnaluuk says, confirming Lin’s suspicions. “Nakivat was doing me a favor on the airship, but it was near the end of my shift anyway.”

“So you’re just going to wait around for your ex-girlfriend?”

“We broke up more than three decades ago,” Arnaluuk says amicably, and cleans Lin’s teacup using waterbending before pouring herself some of the water from Lin’s pitcher. “I’m happily married now, and my wife knows why I’m staying and doesn’t care.”

Lin crosses her arms over her chest. “I didn’t ask for your life story.”

The healer snorts and sips at her water, leaning on her knees and staring at the door as if Kya would come walking through it any moment. “It just hurts to see her like that—she’s usually so full of life. But it could have been worse.”

“She could be dead,” Lin says flatly, as if that makes the tight knot of emotions in her chest any better. “They both could be.”

Arnaluuk nods. “They’re very lucky to be alive.”

Lin closes her eyes and tries not to think of Bumi’s body floating in a casket instead of a healing pool. She’s only marginally successful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been waiting to share that flashback scene with you for month. MONTHS! I hope you liked it as much as I liked writing it.
> 
> Also I made a new OC (one of a few in your future), because I couldn't resist. I love Arnaluuk so much.
> 
> If you enjoyed the chapter, please consider leaving a comment! I love to read them, and they are helping me muscle through the final chapters of Game 3. :) <3

**Author's Note:**

> In the United States, where I am based, the SAMHSA’s National Helpline (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service) is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations. Callers can also order free publications and other information.
> 
> Their phone number is 1-800-662-HELP (4357). You can find their website at https://www.samhsa.gov/ which has lots of free resources for those struggling with substance abuse and their families.


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